Bubblova(2006)

30 ft. aluminum structure, clock tower, kinetic bubble maker
fabrication: Michael Buchanan; Russ Dilworth Scaffold

Bubbalova marks the ephemeral nature of utopianism in modernist architecture.

Bubbalova is a scaled recreation of the historic Bulova Shell Clock Tower, a modernist gem and the centrepiece at the CNE. The elegant and much-loved tower was torn down by the City of Toronto in 1986. This location is the former site of the Colonial Tavern, a renowned and historically important jazz club demolished in 1982. This section of Yonge Street was the centre of the art scene in Toronto during the ’70s. Artists’ lofts and studio spaces made up the majority of residences along this stretch of Yonge.

Bubbalova, a bubble-making tower and a public clock, references the transient nature of our collective memory. The bubbles, perfect fragile spheres, can be seen as metaphors for the resilient and fragile nature of activism and artistic intervention and the poetic — altruistic endeavours that are affected by the “weather” conditions of the political, economic and social parameters that determine the
dominant values of our society.

This tower, constructed out of building scaffold, reminds us that our cities are a mass of temporary building sites and that we are tearing down the old to make way for the more efficient and profitable. Along with this change comes the erasure of values upon which our society was built on: values of respect, craftsmanship, aesthetics and social utopianism.

Bubbalova evokes the senseless destruction and loss of our monuments, while re-inforcing the values of play and delight without capital gain and profit. The bubbles speak to all generations, children and adults alike. The clock, once a fixture on any street corner, now as gone as the dodo, is a cautionary detail that represents our relationship to history and the preservation of our monuments.
How do we as a society determine what is important and what needs to be preserved and maintained?