TH&B: Declaration is on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton February 10 – May 13, 2018
Hamilton-based artists’ collective TH&B has constructed an idiosyncratic aerial view of the Great Lakes mounted on a large-scale billboard installed on the wall of the AGH foyer. Part of their ongoing exploration and mapping of the Great Lakes and escarpment through a variety of artworks and actions, Declaration is at once a sculptural assemblage and a performative surface onto which the team affixes multiple layers of material and meaning.
Created from salvaged materials, the work presents the world’s largest inland source of fresh water as a topographic image that evokes a kind of patchwork geography, suggesting sources of water, geology, modes of transportation, advertising and industrial processes. The artists will embody the cumulative nature of the social and environmental issues as they continue construction of the lakes throughout the duration of this exhibition.
TH&B is the collaborative partnership of Hamilton-based artists Simon Frank, Dave Hind, Ivan Jurakic and Tor Lukasik-Foss.TH&B: Declaration is on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton February 10 – May 13, 2018
Hamilton-based artists’ collective TH&B has constructed an idiosyncratic aerial view of the Great Lakes moun …
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education here at the gallery but before
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that I’m visual artist
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a member of th and B which is collective
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of for artists primarily including items
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erratic and missing your assignment
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Frank and Dave Hines
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so this work behind us it’s called
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declaration it continues and possibly
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finishes our obsession with the Great
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Lakes as a symbol and using in our work
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for decades and also the notion of
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things like public signage public
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billboards ways that we communicate
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information ways that we take geography
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and land at a sense of place and flatten
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it and turn it into symbols and
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signifiers and and that so we have a
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billboard made out of scrap with an
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iteration of the Great Lakes and we’re
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gonna use it as a template for a number
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of work actions that will take place
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during the run of the exhibition where
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we’ll be we pasting other visions of the
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Great Lakes on top of a on top of this
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billboard so the lakes will keep on
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changing and evolving as time goes by so
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a lot of our works take the premise of
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the actual object and we just continue
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to work through them and kind of develop
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them and let them kind of evolve over
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time so the Great Lakes imagery has been
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reused in several iterations as tour set
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up and it’s kind of a recurring motif
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the actual name th and B is trying to
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Hampton Buffalo it’s a defunct railroad
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it has its own symbol as well and that’s
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become a motif that we use in the works
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and these are kind of things that are
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regional signifiers that are relatable
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to anyone living in the Greater Hamilton
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Toronto area they’re recognizable
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they’re also historic but they’re not
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fixed they’re things that we could alter
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that we can do things to that have one
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meeting that could be flipped into
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another meeting that can be then flipped
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into another material that can be cut
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out in one direction and repay stood in
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another so it’s kind of an ongoing
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process this piece comes out of a piece
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we’ve also done that’s up at the
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McMaster Museum of Art right now called
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Basin which is actually a 3-2
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internal sculpture a billboard of Steel
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of the Great Lakes so basin and
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declaration kind of are interesting kind
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of bookends that allow us to deal with
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this kind of localized in imagery but in
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a much kind of broader material way so
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declaration
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unlike the billboard is at once sort of
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has the rounded corners of a billboard
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but if you look at the patchwork it’s
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also it’s also a kind of a patchwork
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cartography
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it’s a strange form of artistic map
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making so on one level we’re kind of
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marking a territory we’re familiar with
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but we’re also bringing up questions
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about advertising industry the active
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labor recycling adaptive reuse the reuse
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of materials we’re really committed to
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this idea and this is something that our
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members Dave and Simon Dave in
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particular are keen on is the idea of
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kind of using and reusing and adapting
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materials into from one piece into
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another piece into another piece of work
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so that there’s a constant kind of a
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churn I suppose between our projects
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that sort of one leads to another leads
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to another and as tour set we’ve been
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doing this for about the better part of
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the last decade and I think the the
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lakes have been this one image that’s
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kind of become a recurring motif record
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but we’ve kind of become associated with
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you notice all the bits of used wood
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reclaimed wood old plywood plywood
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that’s been weathered outside we have
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all these arguments about like our
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materials and they’re probably the most
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vicious arguments that we have as a
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collective because there’s a
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urge to use clean new materials that’s
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always balanced by this no it has to be
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stuff we find and it has to be stuff
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that’s beaten up and and we’re not
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allowed to buy anything new and a lot of
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a lot of what informs that is this idea
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of these surfaces having in endured
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layers of work and there’s a patina
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there’s yeah there’s a patina of
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experience and when we think about the
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Great Lakes
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gets really exciting for us to think
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about it as this yes when you see the
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image of the Great Lakes it’s
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immediately recognizable and it’s it’s
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kind of static in its way and it’s
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looked pretty much the same way for for
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thousands of years and yet it’s been
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this zone of layer after layer of layer
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of human activity and it kind of blows
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our mind when we think about trying to
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create a portrait of that because
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there’s no way to get to the bottom of
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it
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it’s constantly changing it’s constantly
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evolving it’s constantly being intruded
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upon it’s being poisoned it’s being
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remediated and cleaned it’s and so to
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try and create a representation of that
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will always fail but what we like is is
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really trying to attack that notion of a
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surface that gets worked upon and worked
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upon that’s why even though as much as
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we love this object we’re also committed
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to add more layers to it and let it
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evolve let it stay ever-changing and
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kind of in a way that makes it more
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important that this is just a surface
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for work and less about like here’s this
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object that we’ve made it’s more about
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this is this is ever-changing it will
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change it will erode decay like anything
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and it’s complicated it sort of reflects
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the dialogues that we have as a
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collective of four people were
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constantly kind of negotiating for
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complicated
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we’re always negotiating any kind of
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action we do and so there’s an argument
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there’s a counter argument there’s one
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move there’s a counter move the piece
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also nicely displays our process there’s
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panels in here if you look you’ll see
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like written residue of other projects
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we’ve worked on you know and furthermore
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the idea of starting with the idea of
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building an indoor billboard as it came
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together as a patchwork one can imagine
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that this is all wood that we actually
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pulled out of the shores of Lake Ontario
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or Hamilton Harbor and have kind of made
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in a weird way a kind of a life raft out
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of and I like the life raft there’s a
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metaphor because it’s something that’s
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generally made out of reclaimed
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materials out of found materials it
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implies a work
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a work that has a sense of purpose and
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then in terms of the notion of a life
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raft this idea of remediation you know
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here’s this landscape here’s this area
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particularly in a place like Hamilton
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which we’ve kind of treated like a
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garbage dump for the better part of a
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century how could we take this stuff the
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detritus that sort of left behind and
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turn it on its head and maybe try to
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make something more positive about that
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and hopefully also make it kind of a
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statement about the notion of adaptive
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reuse yeah and turning it on its head
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kinda as a nice segue to the fact that
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we’ve put the lakes on its side right we
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the lakes are recognizable but they tend
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to only be recognizable when viewed it’s
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a horizontal or the south pop the bottom
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the minute you twist it 90 degrees yeah
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I can recognize it immediately so you’re
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forced to look at it in a different way
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but again it’s an idea that really
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appeals to us and our relationship with
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this site and with these lakes is always
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just trying to reframe how we how we
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think about it how we see it the
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declaration is up now
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as of January 20th and will stay up
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until May 13th I believe and there’s
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going to be scheduled interactions
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throughout those three months where
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we’re here working on it changing the
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surface the first of those actions is
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February 11th which is our public
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opening for all the exhibition sport in
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ski and the water show and reservoir and
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declaration
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