The Office of Rules and Norms

The Office of Rules and Norms (ORN) is an arts-based transdisciplinary studio headquartered in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. The Office engages with regulations, the rule of law, cultural norms and market standards. These engagements reveal, comprehend, play with, subvert, and transcend current ways of understanding and acting in relation to regulatory forces in order to make room for more equitable alternatives. In its attempts to query legal and behavioural urban infrastructures, the ORN specifically deploys art and design practice, culture, and methods along three axes:

- Art as Subversion | Intervening in grey areas of regulation

- Art as Pedagogy | Making public various forces and forms of influence

- Art as Decision-Making | Reorienting modes of knowing and deliberating

Initial projects carried out in collaboration with Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts focused on grey areas of the building code, socially-biased regulations, the voices of future generations and real estate speculation. It helped generate initiatives such as:

1. Excess and the City: A seminar that unpacks the housing crisis using arts-based practice.

2. Shock Value: A fellowship for students from Excess and the City to realize their class projects, resulting in a series of urban interventions.

3. Inviting Future Generations into Present Negotiations: A digital publication and workshop that investigates the role of art and philosophy for long-term thinking.