Mike Hansen: Noise for the People • by Earl Miller • 1

Hamilton Arts & Letters         A grey, windowless bunker of a building, a giant gravestone (with unbefitting pink trim), stands steadfast next to a crammed metal scrap yard overflowing with auto parts. Behind its nearly bursting fence loom smoke puffing steel plants. Industrial pollution, including noise— hammering, crunching, scratching, and screeching—surrounds the building. And the owner is fine with that. This building, on Lottridge Street in Hamilton’s gritty, steel industry east end, belongs to Mike Hansen, an experimental musician, artist, and long-time Toronto resident. Hansen bought this notorious former Hells Angels’ clubhouse—a local landmark for all the wrong reasons—in a move to Hamilton in 2018 to escape Toronto’s punitive housing and rental prices.     Mike Hansen's studio. Formerly the Hells Angels’ clubhouse, Hamilton, ON. The definitively non-residential industrial environment is ideal for an artist who uses as he says, “noise as a tool to create a social situation.”1    [  >>>>>   FORWARD ] 1 Mike Hansen, “Artist Statement,” accessed May 14, 2020, https://www.mikehansenart.com/artist-statement-aboutit.   + [Distillate © HA&L + Earl Miller {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]