Public (E-Journal, York University)

Florence, Jenny

Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannu Collection

Lau, Charlene

Pieter Hugo at Yossi Mil Gallery

Balfour, Ian

Quaking

Gagnon, Monika Kin

English

Living Archives at the First Nations Garden, Montreal

Uddin, Lisa

Panda Gardens and Public Sex at the National Zoological Park

Pope, R. M.

continuation of imperialism through food distribution, Benner's gardens offer a corrective to themisinformation and hype propagated by the food industry. For instance, Joe Cummins' case studyin this volume, responding to the artists' Translmission: Papaya Vectors (1998), usefully details thereal costs and escalating consequences of introducing genetically-modified papaya. While thefruit may be more resistant to virus, genetic modification also nullifies its medicinal properties(making the population more susceptible to intestinal parasites), contaminates surrounding,non-GM papaya trees (subjecting farmers to lawsuits and economic sanctions), and threatens thelong-term viability of the ecosystem (increasing the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria andfungi). Critiques such as this are a forte of Benner's works, yet there is an affirmative dimensionthat is equally significant, as Matthew Teitelbaum notes (35). Parallel to the admonishment theartworks render against multinationals, there exists an acknowledgment of indigenous peoples'contribution to the world's nutritional well- being, as well as a championing for their right to sharein the economic benefits that thousands of years of farming has produced. Gardens of a ColonialPresent elucidates the full complexity of Benner's practice and, in particular, its notable balancebetween generosity and criticality.Jim DrobnickPublic Art: The Kitsch and the SubtleCher Krause Knight. Public Art: Theory, Practice and Populism.Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, ~oo8, ~o8 pp.Public Art in Canada: Critical Perspectives, edited by Annie Gerin and James S. McLean.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ~oo9, 336 pp.ASSESSING PUBLIC art is a laborious task, inasmuch as it presupposes working definitions of"public" and"art" in an era witnessing the erosion of public communicability and responsibility,on the one hand, and the explOSion of hyper-mediated art and design cultures, on the other. It isthus that Cher Krause Knight, in Public Art: Theory, Practice and Populism, proffers several, at timesconflicting, definitions of public art, as that which is physically and intellectually accessible,immersive and experiential, controversial, and/or simply"fun." Knight admonishes governmentsfor taking a path of least resistance in commissioning assuredly non-offensive, "bland" works ofart, suggesting that they should instead "welcome discord," which, in the words of Erika Doss, isboth "healthy and hopeful" (~o). But if this seems to invite a controversy-courting definition ofpublic art, her final, prescriptive example is Chicago's touristy Cloud Gate: "People take pictures,laugh at their distorted reflections, 'enter' under its l~-foot arch and lie on the ground to marvelat the view... " (154). On the whole, Knight's response to the problems inherent to (the definitionof) public art tends towards the celebration of whatever is enjoyed by diverse audiences.While it would be easy to dismiss this as a too easy populism, it seems no less problematic tomerely reverse one's priorities in celebrating works that self-reflexively politicize themselves andthe spaces each inhabits, as, for instance, did Richard Serra's infamous and oft-discussed TiltedArc (1981). An interventionist work like this might garner a lot of press and fierce debate, but notall communication is commendable-particularly when it polarizes and leaves interlocutors ateach other's proverbial necks, suffocating or foreclosing the space and time in which more pro-ductive dialogue might emerge. In his contribution to Public Art in Canada: Critical Perspectives,Bruce Barber employs Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action to chart the effectivity ofdifferent forms of public art, suggesting that it is at its best when it is open to everyone and wheresome form of discussion/debate is openly encouraged "that mayor may not result in a resolutionor construction and promotion of new ideas for further articulation and action" (175). Sometimes,that which begins in this vein can be diverted into the more problematic, polarizing form of inter-vention, as happened with the Halifax Begs Your Pardon! tactical media event of :400:4; designed as"friendly interventions" that might elicit reflections on the "geopsychological" landscape ofHalifax, the inclusion of a few LCD screens with political messages, left in various parts of the city,ignited a hyperbolic, mass-mediated fear of terrorism that "precipitated the vicious cycle ofprovocation-expression" we have come to know only too well, post-9/u. Barber concludes: "Inthese times, cultural intervention requires ... an attention to the political dynamics of action andprotest that would minimize the risk of reproducing the very power structures that are beingundermined" (178). So where, then, might we find an art that is neither as facile as Cloud Gate noras politicized/politicizable as Halifax... ? Where is this subtle and seductive art?Barber provides one (non- Canadian) example (WochenKlausur), and the other contributors toPublic Art in Canada provide further clues. Jumping off from Erin Manning's observation thatCanadian cultural politics revolves around the superimposition of identity onto questions ofnational territory, Annie Gerin introduces the volume in suggesting that"if public art can be seenas an attempt to petrify accepted notions of collective identity in a given place.. .it also becomes asite where the homogeneity or legitimacy of these representations is constantly challenged andreframed" (8). In a sense, the contemporary crux of public art-the problem of definition(s)-hasalways been a problem in Canada, for what Canadians "share," historically, is a lack of shared his-tory, public, or sense of art's function. If for France or England a monument celebrating victoryover some foreign power was-and to some extent still is-both self-evident and effective in itsspace and time-binding function, in Canada few such monuments have gone uncontested or, asGerin points out in her expose of a beheaded Montreal bust of King George Ill, unmolested (3). Inhis poignant contribution, Jeff Thomas, a photographer and member of the Six Nations Reserve,muses over the fate of 'the Indian' at the base of the Samuel de Champlain monument in thenation's capital, originally placed in a subordinate, kneeling position:Was he intended to appear subservient to Champlain? Was he Champlain's scout? I lookedaround the monument for a plaque that would tell me who this Indian was. But there wasnothing to read, just the familiar silence I have come across so many times before (116).Thomas recounts how the Indian was removed from this spot in response to a protest by theAssembly of First Nations, who argued that "the Indian man misrepresented the contributionsAboriginal people have made to the development of Canada." Thomas suggests that "he shouldhave stayed in place because the monument did in fact symbolize how Canada sees Aboriginal peo-pIe"; "[b]ut," he sardonically continues, "in hindsight the removal and relocation of the Indianwas a perfect example of how Aboriginals were moved from their homeland" (1:40) (my emphasis).To dispel the controversy, the Indian was moved, in 1999, across the street; his "familiar silence"~oo REVIEWSmoved with him as no plaque exists to bear witness to his controversial history. In contrast to agovernment deathly afraid of controversy (and, in this case, of effectively memorializing it) and anorganization unable to appreciate subtleties of history and remembrance, Thomas' work reflexivelyand carefully expresses the manifold tensions that cut through Canada in space and time. Suchwork exemplifies how, in the dispersed and ob-scene era we ex-habit, "public art" can be bothpublic-addressing some form of collectivity that shares common concerns-and art-expressing/realizing cultural and socio-political tensions. Whereas Tilted Arc only relates to its environmentthrough an antagonistic secondary discourse, and Cloud Gate, which could be justifiably labeled asa gelatinous hunk of kitsch, 1 disavows the conditions of its place and production, Thomas' work-if not the now disjointed monuments themselves-remains 'rooted' in "Canadian history,"attempting, in essence, to articulate the antagonisms of this history. Thus, its reflexivity is not "puton"; it emerges from a profound and, in this sense, genuine consideration of the histories at hand.'Concluding Public Art in Canada, James S. McLean notes how new meanings accrue, over time,to any given artistic work: "Avaluable central concern with works of public art... lies in their abilityto indicate the extent of changes to the social formation" (306). At their best, they also index thelack which cuts through the core of the social (de)formation(s), which is what seems at stake notonly in Barber's, Gerin's, and Thomas' contributions, but also in Joan Coutu's analysis of howpublic art in the late 19 th and early ~oth centuries vainly attempted to demonstrate Canadiandomination over nature, Anna Maria Carlevaris' analysis of how different parties came to see theirown struggles and desires reflected in the Montreal monument to John Cabot, and C.S. Ogden'scharting of the "shift away," in the art displayed at Edmonton city hall, "from an artistic sensibilitythat relied on a standardized theme for the city... to a focus on works that represent the lived strug-gles of those who have chosen this place as an adopted home" (154.). Although it remains difficultto describe and assess "public art," it could-and for this very reason-be provisionally said that itis at its most impactful when it reflexively and subtly-that is to say, artfully-addresses this diffiCultycum impossibility, in dialogue with the spaces, histories, and people it inhabits.R. M. PopeNotes1. The allusion to "hunk of shit" is not unintentional. Is Cloud Gate not a wondrous. shiny gift of shit, in which the cityand its people (and its tourists) are reflected? How else to explain the artist's obsessive insistence that each seam berigourously polished and buffed to give the impression the object magically appeared-as though all of a sudden-inthe 'town square'? With its conditions of production rendered invisible, the shiny object takes on the aura of thecommodity fetish and alien gift.2. This discussion could be transposed into cinema. Serra's cinematic equivalent would be the overly self-reflexive anddistanciating Jean- Luc Godard, while Thomas' would be the more subtle and involving-while still reflexive-Krzysztof Kieslowski. The equivalent of Cloud Gate, of course, would be the big budget, special effects dominated,Hollywood event film that lost its storyline by the time it reached the multiplex.~Ol

Public Art: The Kitsch and the Subtle

Drobnick, Jim

ReviewsGardens of a Colonial PresentRon Benner. Gardens ofa Colonial Present.London: Museum London, ~oo8, 184 pp.THE HYBRIDITI of Gardens ofa Colonial Present perfectly suits the themes and practices of its sub-ject' artist/activist Ron Benner. At once a catalogue, monograph and anthology, it gives anoverview of the extensive and impassioned career of an artist who himself crosses media, disci-plines and cultures. In-depth, interpretive essays by curators and critics, as well as by an anthro-pologist, geographer and geneticist, centre on a series of the artist's major garden projects from1984 to the present, while at the same time extending the discussion to environmental politics,neo-colonialist science, and predatory agribusiness. The hybrid strategy works impressively wellin this publication, for Benner's practice engages composite narratives and a diversity of aesthet-ic and activist concerns. Legitimation from the artworld is only a partial motivation. Equallyimportant is the artist's interest in consolidating information about food, plants and their cultur-al context, and articulating provocations in the public sphere. For Benner, the garden is not only amedium for his work, it also serves, in Scott Toguri McFarlane's words, as an "historical documentand ethical injunction" (133).Now that ecological art has become an established genre, it is important to reconsider the workof its pioneers. Even though he is a generation younger, Benner deserves to be grouped with otherinitiators of environmentally-informed activist art, such as Helen and Newton Harrison, AlanSonfist and Mierle Ladermen Ukeles. His work exemplifies the role of the artist- researcher longbefore it became a fashionable moniker. It is also important to note Benner's position as a pioneerin installation, intervention and site-specific practices. In terms of the lyricism and romanticismof recent eco-art, Benner upholds a distinctly refreshing rigour. If conceptual and activist strate-gies bear the tendency to become didactic, Benner astutely avoids this by (literally) grounding hiswork in organisms embedded in the soil. Through the juxtaposition of photography, text andplants, Benner's work persuasively addresses the issue of industrialized agriculture on severalregisters: representation, ideology and matter itself. The natural exuberance of plants that hecarefully selects, arranges and often cultivates over several years intensifies the works' effective-ness-providing a tangible, living argument about the fragility of the world's botanical heritage.In interrogating the assumptions of bioengineering, the commercialization of plants and thecontinuation of imperialism through food distribution, Benner's gardens offer a corrective to themisinformation and hype propagated by the food industry. For instance, Joe Cummins' case studyin this volume, responding to the artists' Translmission: Papaya Vectors (1998), usefully details thereal costs and escalating consequences of introducing genetically-modified papaya. While thefruit may be more resistant to virus, genetic modification also nullifies its medicinal properties(making the population more susceptible to intestinal parasites), contaminates surrounding,non-GM papaya trees (subjecting farmers to lawsuits and economic sanctions), and threatens thelong-term viability of the ecosystem (increasing the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria andfungi). Critiques such as this are a forte of Benner's works, yet there is an affirmative dimensionthat is equally significant, as Matthew Teitelbaum notes (35). Parallel to the admonishment theartworks render against multinationals, there exists an acknowledgment of indigenous peoples'contribution to the world's nutritional well- being, as well as a championing for their right to sharein the economic benefits that thousands of years of farming has produced. Gardens of a ColonialPresent elucidates the full complexity of Benner's practice and, in particular, its notable balancebetween generosity and criticality.Jim DrobnickPublic Art: The Kitsch and the SubtleCher Krause Knight. Public Art: Theory, Practice and Populism.Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, ~oo8, ~o8 pp.Public Art in Canada: Critical Perspectives, edited by Annie Gerin and James S. McLean.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ~oo9, 336 pp.ASSESSING PUBLIC art is a laborious task, inasmuch as it presupposes working definitions of"public" and"art" in an era witnessing the erosion of public communicability and responsibility,on the one hand, and the explOSion of hyper-mediated art and design cultures, on the other. It isthus that Cher Krause Knight, in Public Art: Theory, Practice and Populism, proffers several, at timesconflicting, definitions of public art, as that which is physically and intellectually accessible,immersive and experiential, controversial, and/or simply"fun." Knight admonishes governmentsfor taking a path of least resistance in commissioning assuredly non-offensive, "bland" works ofart, suggesting that they should instead "welcome discord," which, in the words of Erika Doss, isboth "healthy and hopeful" (~o). But if this seems to invite a controversy-courting definition ofpublic art, her final, prescriptive example is Chicago's touristy Cloud Gate: "People take pictures,laugh at their distorted reflections, 'enter' under its l~-foot arch and lie on the ground to marvelat the view... " (154). On the whole, Knight's response to the problems inherent to (the definitionof) public art tends towards the celebration of whatever is enjoyed by diverse audiences.While it would be easy to dismiss this as a too easy populism, it seems no less problematic tomerely reverse one's priorities in celebrating works that self-reflexively politicize themselves andthe spaces each inhabits, as, for instance, did Richard Serra's infamous and oft-discussed TiltedArc (1981). An interventionist work like this might garner a lot of press and fierce debate, but notall communication is commendable-particularly when it polarizes and leaves interlocutors at

Gardens of a Colonial Present

Despard, Erin

IntroductionErin Despard and Monika Kin GagnonIn his introduction to garden theory, Greater Peifections (:4000), John Dixon Hunt outlines a field ofstudy which is both impossibly broad and, he argues, necessarily specialized. As a starting point,he notes that the garden finds its etymological roots in words denoting' enclosure' in many lan-guages. On the basis of this rather minimal defining feature, he generates a vexing range ofgarden types. Amongst some thirty-two gardens cited by Hunt, are such diverse species as rosegardens, vegetable gardens, landscape gardens, cloister gardens, bog gardens, therapeutic gardens,container gardens, and corpse gardens. Contributors to Public: Gardens add even further variantsto Hunt's typology, referencing many garden forms in historical and contemporary contexts. Forexample, there are the "botanicuratorial" museum gardens described and analyzed from an eco-critical perspective by J. Keri Cronin; the numerous forms of school garden analyzed by Kai Mahfrom the perspective of John Dewey's pedagogical philosophy (whose experimental school at theUniversity of Chicago incorporated a garden as early as 1896); and finally the very special form ofallotment garden which is the Alex Wilson Community Garden, whose inception is animated hereby one of its creators, Richard Brault. -Such diversity speaks to the generativity of the garden form. As Lesley Johnstone, former artisticdirector of the International Garden Festival in Grand- Metis, Quebec, asserts, gardens represent"an ideal place for experimentation and innovation" (:4007, 7). Not only is there a great deal offlexibility in what can be considered a garden, gardens in general are inherently "approachable"compared to other art forms. Also, "[bJecause they are places conceived to be used, because theyare outside and thus subject to the variables of weather and nature, because they implicate visitors'bodies as well as their minds, gardens offer particularly intense aesthetic experiences" (9). A goodexample of how such potential is exploited is found in Jane Hutton and Adrian Blackwell'sDymaxion Sleep. Created for the :40°9 festival and featured in this issue, it is at once a sensualolfactory garden, a play structure, and inspired quotation of Buckminster Fuller's famous geodesicdome. The hydroponic community garden known as Flood, created by the artists' collective, Haha,and discussed here by Heather Davis, similarly demonstrates, though in a very different context,how a garden can facilitate new forms of collective agency and expression. Both kinds of gardensexperiment not only with design and artistic practice, but also with processes of perception,participation and social relations.The openness implied in this potential for experimentation, however, exists in a somewhatparadoxical relationship to the garden's etymology and the qualities for which it has more tradi-tionally been valued: that is, of providing a space of seclusion set apart from the world and offeringopportunities for reflection, relaxation and disinterested aesthetic appreciation. While such qual-ities are important to the overall cultural significance and ubiquity of gardens, there is already a7great deal of garden scholarship, which has elaborated on them. We are more interested in exploringengagements that challenge the garden's apparent separation from politics. As earlier works ingarden history have demonstrated, if a garden encloses, it also excludes (Pugh 1988, Harris ~oo3).Many contributions to Public: Gardens thus ask: what might the implications of bringing formerlyexcluded elements, or the garden's'other' within the scope of its study? Wilderness, the uncontrol-lable, even the unattractive-what do these philosophical and aesthetic species bring to the garden'secology?Working along these lines of inquiry, several contributors draw attention to the boundariesand edges of gardens, and the ways that these serve to both exclude and privilege certain qualitiesor characteristics. For example, Jill Didur's essay explores the colonial history of planthuntingexpeditions in the Himalayan mountain ranges of Nepal, through the chronicles of JamaicaKincaid'sAmong Flowers, and demonstrates how this history influences the contemporary desig-nation of plants as 'gardenworthy' or not. Taking a more concrete approach, Susan Herrington'sphoto essay of extraordinary hedges in Vancouver reflects on the significance of using plant life todemarcate boundaries between public and private spaces. Finally, Lisa Uddin's analysis ofattempts to anthropomorphize and choreograph the sex lives of pandas at the Smithsonian'sNational Zoo, demonstrates how garden elements helped to create a setting in which heterosexualnorms could be reproduced and naturalized for the public.Other contributors focus on how the garden's boundaries can be stretched to promote socialand political interventions. Broken City Lab's 'removable gardens', for example, attempt toinspire residents of Windsor, Ontario, to creatively intervene in the city, and to actively imagineits transformation. Working in a similar direction, the contributors to the "Mobile Gardens" port-folio present interventions that are at once whimsical and practical in their response to changingurban environments. Meanwhile Gina Badger's critique of the use of the 'seed bomb' by guerillagardeners argues that in order to become more radically political, such garden-making must domore than simply beautify. We are also very pleased in this context to present two new texts fromgarden designer Gilles Clement, whose gardens always have an explicit political program, andwhose writing on gardens has been influential (and controversial) in the worlds of ecological gar-den design, landscape theory, and garden studies. Clement has a history of working with plantsoften rejected by other designers for being weedy or invasive, but whose habits of growth andmovement around the garden help to make it a more dynamic place, and solicit a different kind ofattention from visitors. The garden described in this issue (and theorized in part by Clement'snotion of 'symbiotic man'), features stinging nettle-a plant that is usually shunned due to itscapacity to sting and irritate human skin, but which in this context produces other effects: thecleansing of a polluted environment, and the creation of an opportunity for community empower-ment and education.Other artists featured in this issue have stepped outside the garden's boundaries to investigateand support the life and beauty of those elements that have escaped its control. For example, OliverKellhammer's found garden of flourishing weeds and indigenous flora, Concrete Island, offers anecology for local insects and birds to co-inhabit in unexpected ways, while Mike MacDonald'slong-time commitment to creating butterfly habitats, has led to the planting of naturalistic, abun-dantly beautiful gardens across Canada. The Wayward Plants Registry rescues abandoned plantsthat have, in a sense, been ejected from the garden, and attempts to reintegrate them into8 INTRODUCTIONhealthy human-plant relations. Finally, Aviva Rahmani's Trigger Point Garden, which is part artwork,part ecological restoration, seeks to bring wildlife back into the garden, and to find an opportunitythere for mutual healing.The reprinting of literary writings on gardens by poet, Lisa Robertson, by novelist, SandraCisneros, by nineteenth-century writer, Catharine Parr Traill, and French Situationist founder,Guy Debord, animate even more varied approaches to imagining what makes a garden.A survey of the texts and works collected here confirms the necessity of the almost impossiblyopen-ended definition provided as a starting point by Hunt. Building on this openness, Public:Gardens highlights the garden as an ideal site for experimentation and innovation. It seeks to givelife to a wide-ranging conversation, one informed as much as possible by concerns beyond thegarden's boundaries. In so doing, we hope to show that gardens need not be limited to landscapesof leisure or mere ornament but rather, belong equally in the realms of art, ethics, and polities.ReferencesHarris, Dianne. ~oo3. The Nature ofAutholitJ' Villa CuLture, Landscape and Representation in Eighteenth-CentUlY Lombardy.University Park Pennsylvannia State University Press.Hunt. John Dixon. ~ooo. Greater Pe1jections, The Practice of Garden Theory. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.Johnstone, Lesley, ed. ~oo7' Hybrids, Reshaping the Contempormy Garden in Metis, Vancouver, blueimprint.Pugh, Simon. 1988. Garden, Nature. Language. Manchester, Manchester University Press.9

Introduction

Davis, Heather

Growing Collectives: Haha + Flood

Allan, Kenneth R.

Grounds of Forgetting and Intermediaries for Memory: Some Photographs by David C. Miller

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