Blow-Up Stroll

Rebar, the art and design collective that brought you Park(ing) Day, has come up with a creative new way to interact with the urban environment: Bushwaffle. Just as Park(ing) Day repurposed a public space — the parking spot — Bushwaffle purports to turn the entire city into the rec room of your dreams. In its simplest form, it's a pink inflatable cushion about the size and shape of a chubby cartwheeling toddler. The cushions can be hooked together to make impromptu easy chairs, trampolines, or forts, or they can be used as bicycle airbags, privacy screens, or bantam-weight punching bags. Your imagination's the limit -- a limit which Rebar is quite happy to push on its Bushwaffle Tour, a public stroll incorporating their blow-up tool. The tour, says Rebar, will demonstrate "the power of Bushwaffle to soften any urban surface and provide space for freedom and play." Apply Bushwaffle to the city, and those hard surfaces vanish. Truly, the Bushwaffle gives a whole 'nother meaning to "art inflation."
Wed., Jan. 7, noon, 2009