Action Hero & Mia + Eric | Future Perfect: New By-laws for Civic Spaces
JAN. 31, 2026 - APR. 30, 2026
OFF-SITE

Viewable on billboards across the city, in the City of Lethbridge Recreation & Culture Guide, and a sign at 3071 26 Ave N

Lethbridge, January 2026: billboards and signs with strange texts which look like they’ve been cut up and reassembled, begin to appear around the city. Slowly, these signs begin to build a narrative, creating an accidental linguistic choreography, creating moments of humour, absurdity and possibility.

who made the RULES

These texts created by artists Action Hero and Mia + Eric, use only words from Lethbridge’s Land Use by-law. Throughout 2025, the artists painstakingly cut up these by-laws word by word and reassembled them to create a set of new rules for the future city. From this new poetic script, selected phrases were enlarged and re-inserted back into the architecture of the cityscape, acting as playful instructions, permissions or manifestos; a collection of imagined alternative behaviours unfolding throughout the city.

By remoudling Lethbridge’s by-laws into an accidental poetry that re-constructs, re-engineers and rehearses possible futures, Future Perfect acts as a large-scale remnant of the cut-up process, the signs working against the fast-moving digital dialogues of the internet, media and advertising. As the signs appear and re-appear in the night-time urban landscape, a slow-moving narrative develops that invites citizens to imagine alternative ways to move through civic space.

Whilst the signs and billboards appearing across the city are often funny and even whimsical, the project aims to provoke a reconsideration of the rules that govern behaviour in public space, and asks citizens to pause a moment to consider how these rules have been written and who writes them. Citizens are invited to re-encounter the city afresh, and to understand and interpret the familiar with a new lens. 

take it As a Sign that Transition is possible

In turn, we might ask who wrote the original rules, how, and why? By cutting them up and playfully re-arranging them, the door is left open for a deeper kind of civic engagement with the municipal rule-making process.

Future Perfect: New By-laws For Civic Spaces gently leads citizens to the logical conclusion-why not throw out the old words entirely, and find new ones? Why not re-write the rules for real and have citizens be at the heart of that process?

Gemma Paintin & James Stenhouse work under the moniker Action Hero. Together, they create artworks that explore what is it to be human now. James & Gemma’s long-form, shape-shifting collaboration spans performance, installation, sound, events & social practice. Since 2005, the work Action Hero has created has toured to more than 40 countries across 5 continents; from the smallest DIY and artist-led spaces to some of the world’s most prestigious art institutions, galleries and festivals.

Action Hero create structures for people to experience alternative ways of being together. From stage to page to audio to immersive interaction, the company’s work and process is nomadic, mercurial and led by a desire to approach the world differently. Moving between forms, the work of Action Hero feels totally familiar yet completely unknowable at the same time, embracing mystery, complexity and holding human connection at its heart.

Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis are an interdisciplinary artist team from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Since 2008 they have been creating interdisciplinary exhibitions, temporary public art, participatory works, and interventions under the moniker, Mia + Eric. They bring together elements of craft, performance, cultural geography, and multi-species ethnography to create site-specific and socially-engaged works. Thematically their practice deals with interspecies relationships, biodiversity and place-based knowledge production in cities, small towns, and rural spaces. They have presented projects, artist talks, workshops, and exhibitions at both formal and DIY galleries, festivals, residencies, conferences, and post-secondary institutions regionally, nationally, and internationally. They often work in contemporary performance/theatre and visual art contexts.

Future Perfect is generously supported by Lead Sponsor PATTISON Outdoor Advertising.