About The Institute of the Marginal and Imaginary Regions
What is the IMIR?
The Institute of the Marginal and Imaginary Regions explores an allegorical story about an imaginary institute through interactive narrative-building. Interaction takes place through the BLOG of the IMIR on this site. See “Benefits of Membership” below for more information about how to interact with the story.
By remaining imaginary and allegorical, the IMIR can venture into the fantastic, absurd, and magical.
The Role of Reflection
Reflection on the stories of the IMIR may be relevant to the “bricks and mortar” world. While the allegorical narrative grows from play, occasional reflection may render insights.
Institutes as Interactive Narratives
The Story of the Bench
A neighbourhood bench establishes shared ideas of safety, welcoming, and community. It took many trips to city hall before there was agreement to install it on a boulevard. Over time, the people who built it moved away, new people arrived, and the bench remained. It continued to be shared space, and still provided a sense of community and welcoming, but its influence on perceptions and behaviour was no longer conscious. The bench had acquired a system of meanings just beneath awareness.
The Story of City Hall
Likewise, long before the story of the bench began, city hall had become a complex system of meanings. The story is too long and complicated to tell here.
Reflection on Institutes as Interactive Narratives
Institutions are places where meanings merge with space-time (spatio-temporal-cognitive regions), and may be captured in architectural forms and structures. Meanings evolve through stories created by the interaction of participants over time.
As an imaginary institute, the Institute of the Marginal and Imaginary Regions accepts the challenge of remaining a cognitive region, where imaginary architecture is one of many possibilities.
Benefits of Membership
- Participate in imagining and creating the interactive narrative through attendance at meetings (on line or via the BLOG), moving and voting on motions, calling meetings, posting notices, and more.
- Receive minutes to meetings when they are available.
- Have a chance to make submissions to the collection in the Library, and move motions and/or vote on acquisitions. Current categories in the collection include “Evidence of the Imaginary in Daily Life”, “Mot’s Shots”, and “Mot’s Maps”.
- Have a chance to participate in events such as interviews, readings, book reviews (of books that appear in the Library from time to time), parties, and other social events.
- Have a chance to move motions on additional opportunities for members and to initiate events.
- Have access to some free downloads and offers from Imaginary Regions Publishing.
- It’s free.
To join, please contact us for more info:
The Library of the Institute
The Library is imaginary, as is the Institute. Francis Sifton, the Librarian, has begun to develop a collection of art and texts that will be accessible to members.
The current collection includes photographs by Arthur Mot, and a few of his meditations on place and time, to be published at a later time.
There has also been a program to gather images that suggest the presence of the imaginary in everyday life.
A corner in the Library of the IMIR, with an imaginary Imaginor’s Chair (image by Marianne Neill).
Founders and Staff
The IMIR has developed from the work of Thin Air Collective (an imaginary group including Marianne Neill, and the imaginary Arthur Mot, Ami Deschens, and Francis Sifton). Arthur Mot led the initiative, with Marianne Neill as the contact in real space-time. Ami Deschens is a contact in imaginary space-time, who takes a range of assignments for Arthur Mot and Francis Sifton. Francis Sifton is the Librarian in the Library of the Institute.
Imaginary Regions Publishing
The Institute occasionally produces publications (such as this website) using Imaginary Regions Publishing as a service provider. This is a real-world entity managed by Marianne Neill.
History
The IMIR website first appeared in April 2017, and was updated in November 2020 and again in August 2021. IRMI is the ‘Institut des régions marginales et imaginaires’. A more detailed archive will follow later, as part of the collection of the Library.
Photo by Ami Deschens from the collection of the Library of the IMIR — an image that purports to show the presence of the imaginary in everyday life.
Possible Topics for Discussion at Meetings and Social Events
A few of the imagined topics:
How do we transport ourselves to the Imaginary Regions?
How do we know when we have arrived?
If the IMIR must commit to remaining imaginary, what does this mean, and is it sustainable?
Is it possible for an institute to remain in the space between meaning systems?
From this vantage point, can it be helpful in promoting institutional self-awareness and ongoing reflection? If so, how?
What should its internal processes look like? Shall we start with dialogue and see where it goes?
Is there music in the IMIR?
Contact Us
To join and/or contact the Institute, please email: imaginaryregionspublishing@gmail.com
All information will be kept confidential.
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