Saara Liinamaa

All Citizens Saara Liinamaa

In 2006, two artists fled the high cost of living in Vancouver and moved to a place where they knew absolutely nobody, Bruno, Saskatchewan, population 500. They set up a storefront building in which they housed their own unique brand of café / art shop / community centre / music venue called All Citizens from 2007-2011. McCarroll kept a blog called Going Rural of her travels and experiences moving and setting up shop. This blog (text and photographs) forms a significant chapter of the All Citizens art book and serves as an introduction to Saara Liinamaa s essay on rural interventions. The documentation (in text, interviews, and photographs) of the artistic practice of three local senior women formed McCarroll s MFA thesis project in the Documentary Media Program at Ryerson and constitutes another significant chapter. Cartoonist David Collier visits one of these women in Bruno and provides a comic essay in his own style. Also contributing is artist Jason McLean. But the heart of the All Citizens project was the store itself, a meeting place, shop, cultural centre, music venue and all things in between. It was the ultimate culmination of a DIY aesthetic forged onto a rural landscape. Includes Bonus CD: Daniel, Fred, and Julie: Live at All Citizens.