Land|Slide: Possible Futures by PUBLIC Journal: Art Culture Ideas

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LAND|SLIDE P OS S I B LE F UTU R E S A PUBLIC ART INTERVENTION

Edited by: Janine Marchessault ChloĂŤ Brushwood Rose Jennifer Foster Aleksandra Kaminska

Line Surface engraved with a narrow stroke, path imagined between two points. Of singular thickness, a glib remark, a fragment, an unfinished phrase. It is any one edge of a shape and its contours in entirety. Melody arranged, a recitation, the ways horizons are formed. Think of leveling, snaring, the bodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disposition (both in movement & repose). It has to do with palms and creases, with rope wound tight on someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand, things resembling drawn marks: a suture or a mountain ridge, an incision, this width of light. A razor blade at a mirror, tapping out a dose, or the church of conveyor belts, the scoured, idling machines. A conduit, a boundary, an exacting course of thought. And here, the tautness, of tent stakes, earth shoveled, the depth of a trench.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Matt Donovan, Vellum

ANGEL CHEN

KEN GREGORY

DAVID HARRIS SMITH

Wa yfinding by TI M EAN D D ES I R E

MARK-DAVID HOSALE

MARIA HUPFIELD

GLYNIS LOGUE

C ONTE NTS

G OI N G P U B LI C: Art, Urbanism, and Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century JANINE MARCHESSAULT

TH E R I VE R GLYNIS LOGUE

TH E FAR M ANDREW BIELER AND HEATHER RIGBY

TH E GATH E R I N G LISA MYERS AND RICHARD FUNG

AL MANAC ARON LOUIS COHEN

G R E G ORY’S S U N S U C K E R S KEN GREGORY

MAR K HAM K EYWOR D S LAB ORATORY - E CH O XU TAN

C U RATOR B OT DAVID HARRIS SMITH

D I RT I S N OT A D I RTY WOR D SHELLEY HORNSTEIN

TH E R U S T I N TH E FU R R OW DAVID HAN

TH E TE XTU R E D STR U CTU R E SKYHILL COLLECTIVE

S L AU G HTE R H OU S E PHILIP HOFFMAN

DAVE COLANGELO AND PATRICIO DAVILA JULIE NAGAM JENNIE SUDDICK

ARON LOUIS COHEN

ALLYSON MITCHELL

DUKE AND BATTERSBY

BLUE REPUBLIC

MMM: LISA MYERS, SEAN MARTINDALE, AND YVAN MACKINNON

ALI KAZIMI

MARMAN AND BORINS

AL L P U R P OS E MMM: LISA MYERS, SEAN MARTINDALE, AND YVAN MACKINNON

M O R N I N G DAI LY BLUE REPUBLIC

O CEAN S W ITH I N ALI KAZIMI

TH E I NTI M ATE R E LATI ON S OF S U STAI NAB I LI TY: Pedagogical Encounters and Subjective Ecologies CHLOË BRUSHWOOD ROSE

D I M S U M CI TY ANGEL CHEN

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E U P H O R I A’S H I C CU PS DEIRDRE LOGUE, WITH GLYNIS LOGUE

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S TOM PI N G G R O U N D JENNIE SUDDICK

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G U H WHY LOW WH ITE G H OST LE S B IAN ALLYSON MITCHELL

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S U PE R M AR K HAM L+

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U N H O OK I N G S U STAI NAB I LITY D I S COU R S E TH R O U G H ART: Presence, Displacement, and the Cultural Politics of Representation JENNIFER FOSTER

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KAP KAR / 4P- CL 8 FRANK HAVERMANS

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singing our bones home JULIE NAGAM

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A S U R FACE D E S CR I B I N G TH E VOLU M E OF EARTH DI S P LAC E D FOR R E DE VE LOP M E NT ON TH I S B U I LDI NG’S OR I G I NAL S ITE ADRIAN BLACKWELL AND JANE HUTTON

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B UYI N G AN D S E L LI N G DEPARTMENT OF UNUSUAL CERTAINTIES, WITH SARA FRENCH

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MAR K HAM A Z E IAIN BAXTER&

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U R BAN V E R N ACU LAR LAURA ST. PIERRE

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TH E O CC U PATI O N OF S PACE: Creatively Transforming Indigenous Living Histories in Urban Spaces JULIE NAGAM

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W H E R E WI LL YOU G O N OW? JEFF THOMAS

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1 OF 1 MARIA HUPFIELD

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TH E LI N E DAVE COLANGELO AND PATRICIO DAVILA

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TI M EWAR P CAMILLE TURNER

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P E E PI N G H O M E TONGUE & GROOVE

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R EAL AN D VI RTUAL H I STO R I E S OF PAST AN D F UTU R E I N TH E H E R ITAG E VI LLAG E ALEKSANDRA KAMINSKA AND JANINE MARCHESSAULT

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ALWAYS P OP U L AR, N EVE R C OOL DUKE AND BATTERSBY

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TH E R E’S TH I N G S THAT EVE N A D R U N K W I L L N EV E R F O R G ET TERRANCE HOULE

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TH E AN N U N C IATI ON 2013 CHRISTINE DAVIS

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S TR I K E WH I LE TH E I R ON I S H OT MARMAN AND BORINS

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M OTH E R / H O M E / H EAVE N CAITLIN FISHER, TONY VIEIRA, AND TRISTAN PRESCOTT

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TH E C UTTI N G R OO M DAVID KIDMAN

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ho mu ncul us ag ora (h.a) MARK-DAVID HOSALE

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L AN D| S LI D E: Possible Futures at the 5th Shenzen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture YAN WU

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B I O G RAPH I E S

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AC K N OWL E D G M E NTS

Arts and Crafts House slated to be moved, located adjacent the Markham Museum, 2013. Note the new condo tower by Greenpark which was an ever present background to the exhibition as noted by Robert Everett-Green. Photo: Asad Raza.

GOING PUBLIC Art, Urbanism, and Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century JAN I N E MARCH E S SAU LT

What if artists were to create new forms of urban planning to address broader issues where traditional forms of political engagement, city planning, and policy development have fallen short? The most enlightened urban planners and designers have always been interested in public art’s capacity to communicate across diverse communities, to inspire new insights, and to propose generative pathways and ecologies. These are some of the ideas we sought to propose in September and October 2013 with the public art intervention Land|Slide: Possible Futures. The show was located at the Markham Museum, an open-air historic village in Markham, southern Ontario, one of Canada’s most culturally diverse and fastest-growing cities. The city spreads across one of the most agriculturally rich regions in North America and sits on the edge of Ontario’s massive Greenbelt, created to preserve farmland and wilderness. For three weeks, Land|Slide artists transformed the museum’s well-preserved historical buildings, opening them up to contemporary dialogue through surreal, utopian, and haunting artworks. They augmented the past in often humorous and always ingenious ways to suggest interwoven lines of human culture, wildlife, migration, and sustainability that must be considered as we plan and develop future landscapes. Thirty artists were commissioned to transform the 25 acres of the Markham Museum and Heritage Village through indoor and outdoor installations as a way to reimagine the complex historical and ecological fabric of the city of Markham. Artists were asked to reinterpret the Museum’s 80,000 historical artifacts and 30 historic buildings and dwellings (constructed between 1850 and 1930) to explore themes of multiculturalism, sustainability, and community. The exhibition opened up the past to reflect on the future, sometimes blurring the space between the two. It presented a variety of projects, including installations, performances and sculptures, bookmaking and photography, 3D cinema, and augmented reality. The exhibition asked how we can address some of the most pressing tensions facing us today: the balance between ecology and economy, agriculture and development, and diversity and history. The artworks were designed to create a public conversation and to recognize the vitality of the “outside” world. In particular the curatorial team singled out the incredible experiment that is Southern Ontario’s Greenbelt—one of the largest bodies of protected land on the planet. In this exhibition, several artists drew from their personal archives to create new histories: from the bedroom of a teenage girl who grew up in Markham in the 1990s

T H E FA R M AN DR EW B I E LE R AN D H EATH E R R IG BY

A winding landscape of orange and yellow nasturtiums, thriving purple podded pole beans, and luscious tomatoes can be seen growing in the nutrient dense clay soil on the east side of the apple orchard. We have come to call this sunny stretch of land The Farm. This project brought together youth from across Markham, to collectively explore the future of farming in both the fastest growing and one of the most agriculturally rich cities in North America. Participants envisioned a future food policy for Markham in collaboration with diverse food policy groups, such as the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council (TYFPC), and created this vision with artist Angel Chen in a workshop called Let the Dry Goods Speak. In the mural that came out of this workshop, participants connected childhood memories of cooking and growing beans, lentils, and other dry goods to a food policy vision of protecting farmland, reflexively localizing agricultural production and providing healthy veggies for the citizens of Markham. In this way, youth participants worked with a diverse array of artists, urban farmers, and food policy activists, to design and implement a small farm. In the winter of 2013, we began with a collaborative approach to crop planning that started with an initial list of “learning crops.” We proceeded with a series of food story circles, which grounded this list in edible memories, and ended in the adaptation of the list to the site itself. Working with the land and with the rich socio-ecological memory of this area, participants created planterventions, aquaponics, vertical farming, and diverse experiments with the potential of the agricultural line.

ALMANAC ARON LOU I S C OH E N

Almanac was created to track the transformation of part of an animal, plant, or any other rough material, to a finished object used in daily life. Originally, a plant or animal is not thought of as material but once we reduce a thing/being to its essential parts it becomes material. It is this change in attitude and perception that was explored. The project also examined the relationship of a farmer to his or her crops, which this project treated as a type of craft, creating through communication, and harmony with plants. To understand what is added, what is lost, and what remains, Almanac began as a field of flax plants grown on the grounds of the museum. In early August the plants were harvested, dried, cut up, cooked, re-dried, cut again, pulped in a paper beater, and formed into sheets of paper. The resulting flax paper was pressed in the museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nineteenth-century letterpress to publish 200 copies of the almanac. The plantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; energy, gathered from the sun, wind, rain, soil, and my labour became essential elements embedded in the pages. The pages and the press were a necessary material to contain fixed ideas in text form. The transformation of materials has become an essential element in relaying information from one person to another, in the present and through time. Not always has this been done with text, but any crafted or designed object it seems relays ideas from the maker to the user. The text of the almanac describes in detail the process of its own making. It becomes a seed, set to produce more like itself, and so the book was distributed to visitors during the exhibition. The text also embodies the experiences of its makers, both plant and human. It is my belief that Almanac remains more than material, it is a container holding energy, spirits, places, and ideas.

G R E G O RY â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S S U N S U C K E R S :

B o r eal Ar t ificial F lora

K E N G R EGORY

IDENTIFICATION Sun Suckers are machines. They are classified in the order Real Artificial Life.

They have stout flat bodies. The skin is a large photovoltaic cell and usually shiny, although in a few species it is dull and opaque. Sun Suckers have one large compound eye situated on the top of the body. This large eye can read how bright the sun is during the day and detect when night falls. Beside the eye is a thick whisker. This sensor measures the ambient temperature in close proximity of the Sun Sucker. HABITS Sun Suckers feed by sitting in the sunlight and sucking up rays of light. The skin sucks up the photons and converts them into electric energy, which then flows from the skin into the body (micro-controller) for further processing.

Sun Suckers can be found basking in the sun on logs or stumps in summer. They are very passive and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t move when approached. Smaller kinds often live in short grasses, or even on smooth rocks. Sun Suckers, if eaten by birds or animals, are poisonous. Their bodies are made up of toxic plastic and metal components. This means that the Sun Sucker has no place in the evolutionary chain as they have no natural predator and could be considered a pest. SINGING Sun Suckers are notorious singers with each song produced by sensing the current light conditions and temperature. Each species has its own distinctive song. Some large species such as the Northern Sun Bomber and the Woolly Screecher produce a noise intensity in excess of 120 dB at close range (this is approaching the pain threshold of the human ear). In contrast, some small species have songs so high in pitch that the noise is beyond the range of our hearing.

and F auna for (un)Na t ur a l E nvir onment s

The apparatus used by Sun Suckers for singing is complex and research is still continuing on the mechanisms involved. The organ which produces sound is a small, flat piezo transducer at the front of the body. Modulating the internally produced AC voltage in pulses causes the transducer to buckle inwards and outwards producing a pulse of sound. Many species of Sun Suckers sing all day. The loud noise produced by some Sun Suckers can annoy and confound humans and animals alike. LIFE AND DEATH The idea for the Gregory’s Sun Sucker was based on examining the impact of colonial intervention into Australia’s environment. Introduced species of non-native animals and plants which are now known to be detrimental, revealed the effect of “improving” on nature. Second, the installation looks into the future where the possibility of there being no nature will have us all making up artificial devices to mimic it.

The Sun Sucker was introduced to the Canadian environment by media artist Ken Gregory. This research follows a long tradition of outsiders meddling with the environment by introducing non-native species in the hopes of improving on what nature has provided.

Markham under construction, 2013. Photo: Asad Raza.

D I RT I S N OT A D I RTY WOR D S H E LLEY HOR N STE I N

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. —Genesis 3:19

LAND/ING

“Dirt is a Free Souvenir.” These words, coined by Jeanne Gang, MacArthur Fellow and architect of the now iconic Aqua Tower in Chicago, reveal her penchant for collecting dirt and then cataloguing it into small clear-plastic cubes. Dirt, she suggests, is a filter and reservoir of toxins. It is a souvenir, a trace, a record, and through this tangible, dirty “object” it is an archeology—even an archive of sorts—of human and animal habitation. Dirt is essential to know and value because it determines in many ways what can be built in a specific site.1 Everything is most certainly not solid. The earth’s protective layer, or the skin of the planet, has been endlessly documented and measured by geographers and topographers, earth scientists and agronomists. Even Darwin, in his last book, argues for the necessity to track the simple earthworm in all its behaviours, particularly since he examined anecdotally how quickly some of the ancient ruins in the English countryside were sinking. After a series of observations about pavements lying twelve inches below ground, he concluded that worms played a crucial and unique role in forming topsoil.2 Between the earth and the built forms of our urban cultures is an understanding of how our constructed surroundings take shape and where an agreement exists—or perhaps a dealwith-the-devil—between what is solid and what is not. Both the ground beneath our feet3 and man-made building materials jockey for a rightful claim to real estate on Planet Earth. That dynamic of the clutching of the built form to the sliding and breathing and slipping and living land below, is what defines place-making or the sense—or senselessness—of the material thing we build that occupies a place on and in the dirt. Yet as we venture (or evolve, some might suggest) into virtual spheres and lose touch, literally, with the earth, a question looms that takes a backward glance: what does it mean to move into digital realms, read the “future” of the past, without a material object to keep us connected to the planet and remind us of our rich geographic place and of gravity itself? And furthermore, can that material object such as architecture that is purpose-built to be, for example, a house or a barn, continue to convey the

TH E TE XTU R E D STR U CTU R E S K YH I LL C OLLECTIVE

The Skyhill Collectiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Texture Structure is a small unique building constructed on the grounds of the exhibition, which is open for the visiting public to enter and explore. The 8 x 12-foot structure is made up of four different walls, each exhibiting a low-tech building technique, as well as heating and lighting possibilities. These include using papercrete cordwood, cedar cut-off shingling, board and batten panelling, and a trombe wall. Functionality is also considered, with a wood heat source and rain water collection shown. The building is a demonstration of mixing the creative and the practical, of reclaiming the basic skills of providing shelter for ourselves, where the process itself becomes an important part of the narrative of a home. The project encourages pondering where the form of our shelter is going, without simply wanting to return to the past. This building represents but one possibility among many. This building encapsulates a space, a tiny zone, that sums up some of the aspects of life that we find important. Through four walls, a roof, and a door, one enters a different world. We have filled it with objects that make it feel of home, tangible representatives of our beliefs, here on a green lawn in a city far away. More than one person who entered said that it reminded them of a childhood room, of a place once lived in, and now missed. As artists and as human beings, we believe that there is value in beauty and creativity, and we reject valuing shelter and other aspects of our lives in strictly economic terms. We should be questioning the current transformation of the natural landscape, and perhaps answers can be found in remembering the past, choosing carefully for the future, and being as aware as possible of the present. The Texture Structure comes out of the Skyhill Collectiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s combined interests in do-it-yourself building techniques, historical agricultural buildings, and interacting with the natural in a time of quickly changing landscapes, together with the experience of living in rural Ontario. It was also motivated by experimentation with new technologies, as well as the revival of past ones. The name of the collective comes from the organic farm that the original members started in Grey County in 1984.

ALL PURPOSE Addit ional Nut r itio na l I nfor ma t io n M M M: LI SA MYE R S, S E AN MARTI N DALE, AN D Y VAN MAC K I N NON

On the outside, with paint peeling off its old wood slats, the Burkholder carriage house at the Markham Museum shows its age. However, within its barn doors, you will find the incongruously pristine and contemporary All Purpose white-cube gallery. Prior to this transformation into exhibition space, the carriage house was being used by the museum as improvised storage. The historic exterior of the building stood in contrast its interior, which was lined with more recent yet unfinished and heavily water damaged plywood sheets and makeshift shelves. The floor was an uneven and cracked poured concrete foundation, covered in years of accumulated debris. Converted by the artists, the interior of this heritage structure was stripped of most local and historic characteristics—“refined and enriched”—to meet the generic expectations for mass “high art” consumption. With countless layers of sanded plaster and white paint, MMM laboriously sculpted the walls to look like the finished and painted drywall usually found in both galleries and condos. The fractured concrete floor

Angel Chen, Dim Sum City. Deirdre Logue, Euphoriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hiccups. Jennie Suddick, Stomping Ground.

T H E I N T I M AT E R E L AT I O N S O F S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y Pedagogical Encounters and Subjective Ecologies CH LOË B R US H WO OD ROS E

Over the last decade, contemporary artists and curators have become interested in notions of pedagogy as describing the kinds of public engagements and social practices that animate both art institutions and de-institutionalized art spaces. Curator Irit Rogoff writes about the “educational turn” in contemporary art as a reimagining of cultural institutions like the museum or the art exhibition, where the pedagogical impulse is relational and situational, and thus acts as a force of de-institutionalization.1 Rogoff cautions that the “turn” to education in contemporary art may itself become institutionalized and instead explores the idea of “turning”—to the next thing, to the new idea or encounter—as the site of education or pedagogy. This approach to pedagogy takes us out of the traditional relations of schooling, and the relations between teacher and student, to think about how pedagogical experience might be a foundational condition of social engagement and public life. Instead of thinking about education in institutional terms, Rogoff asks, can we think of education as something that touches all the institutions of culture? Rogoff advocates for what she calls “weak education,” an approach she contrasts with “strong, redemptive, missionary education.” “Weak education,” she writes, is “a discourse on education that is non-reactive” and instead posits education as “in and of the world— not a response to crisis, but part of its ongoing complexity, not reacting to realities, but producing them.”2 Here, the significance of education is not understood in terms of the institution’s significance, or what the institution can teach us, but instead through the “weaker” question (to use Rogoff’s language) of what possibilities for engaging ideas differently it might offer. This conceptual shift suggests a theory of pedagogy as something unsanctioned or radically de-institutionalized, “propelled from within rather than boxed in from outside.”3 In public settings, such as the public art exhibition, education “becomes the site of a coming-together of the odd and unexpected—shared curiosities, shared subjectivities, shared sufferings, and shared passions congregate around the promise of a subject, an insight, a creative possibility.”4 The work of Rogoff and others5 offers a new way of thinking about the roles pedagogy and public art might play in the context of the social, political, and economic crises we gather under the heading ‘sustainability,’ and suggests innovative approaches to pedagogy through the staging of encounters with

點心城市 Dim Sum City

G U H WHY LOW WHITE GHOST LESBIAN ALLYSON M ITCH E LL

The Chapman House was transported from near the intersection of Kennedy Road and Steeles Avenue where the notorious Pacific Mall now stands. Guh Why Low is the Cantonese pronunciation of white ghost, at best a charming nickname or, more likely, a deserved insult that marks the culture of whiteness and the empty promise of colonialism. For this installation the spectral lesbian haunts the Chapman house as the white ghost, traced through lines of European settler ancestry, is simultaneously written and erased through racist and homophobic histories. With same sex marriage (and divorce) well established in Canada, it appears to some as though things are how they ought to be. To others it is a harbinger of doom and the nigh end timesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where sinfilled monsters move freely among us. To some politicized queers the assimilation is apocalypticâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the erosion of decades of activism that called for a reordering of society subsumed into terrifying homonationalist causes. To capture this affective tension a mini haunted house has been constructed in the space. The house is infested. Hair wreaths hang on the walls, crocheted cobwebs loom and cloy in corners, doorknobs rattle from unsettled spirits behind locked closets and from the basement come the sounds of lesbian ghost moanings.

Art by Canniev.

U N H O O K I N G S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y DISCOURSE

Mes s y a nd I ndet ermina te, Displa ced P r es ent, F luid B ounda ries , E la st ic Terra in J E N N I F E R FOSTE R

Sustainability is among the most malleable concepts in contemporary culture. At its core, it signifies provision of a future that is ecologically, socially, and economically robust, a future where destruction, waste, and injustice are devoid, or at least attenuated. Sustainability requires both reflection and planning, being thoughtful and intentional about how past, present, and future actions affect the complex interplay between the biophysical, socio-cultural, economic, and spiritual dimensions of life, each of which deeply impact and inform one another. Proponents of sustainability ask how we might move toward advanced environmental, economic, and social consideration. Any responses, however, are projections at best, ideals that might guide our individual and collective choices. And there is the rub, the point where its conceptual benevolence becomes sociopolitical terrain. Popular definitions of sustainability typically emphasize planning for future generations, some of the touchstones of which include a long-term perspective, holistic outlook, acceptance of limits, focus on place, and active involvement in problemsolving (see, for example, Wheeler, 2004).1 In the public imagination, sustainability is most tangibly negotiated by policymakers operating at scales ranging from the global to site-specific, or by planners guiding and regulating permissible land uses, or by economists strategizing a stable financial future. The documents that they produce typically dominate mainstream discourse, disciplined by professional standards and expectations. Economic growth is a near universal precondition, environmental efficiency or modernization stands in for ecology, and serious commitments to social justice are rare. It is also often imagined as something governed by individual choice. By consuming less, wasting less, and recycling more, environmental collapse might be averted, or at least held off a bit longer. The anticipatory structures that condition sustainabilityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the habits of thinking and action, visions of what is proper, egregious, relevant, and possibleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;have become sustainabilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest limitation. By framing it as something that is either regulated through policy or reduced to consumer choice, sustainability is guided through a narrow set of paths with constricted views of what exists and what is feasible. What we desperately need are new imaginative capacities, new critical vocabularies that cast open the limitations of the accepted narratives about the past, received wisdoms about the present, and taken-for-granted truths about the future. This is the point of departure for Land|Slide: Possible Futures.

KAPKAR / 4P-CL8 F RAN K HAVE R MAN S

The Markham Museum lies on the edge of the former pioneer village of Markham, which has long been annexed by Toronto. Just like other villages in the vicinity, Markham still has a historic centre but the largest part of its territory is taken up by seemingly endless and uniform new suburbs. This is presently the fastest growing urban area in Canada and perhaps even in North America. It is remarkable that large parts of these new towns are populated by Asian immigrants, mainly Chinese, who buy not just a house but also the freedom associated with moving to Canada. This is a lucrative industry for Canadian project developers who cleverly play into their expectations. An endless number of tightly arranged, freestanding timber-framed homes in that typical romantic-looking North American style is being built quickly. These developments are replacing fine arable land and former farming families are moving elsewhere. Old houses are being broken down or moved sometimes to the Markham Heritage Estate where enthusiasts can buy a plot of land to relocate the house, with the obligation to restore it. Several other remarkable buildings from the community have ended up in the adjacent open air museum, the Markham Museum. They are being cared for in a somewhat odd environment where the buildings are shown in a newly staged context. The Strickler Barn, the building that I chose for my project and worked in for five weeks as an artist-in-residence, has been moved, along with the farmhouse, from a location at the side of the road to someplace else on the premises. The entire context, the landscape and the farmyard, have disappeared. The archetypical shape and the interesting wooden construction of the barn stand out, signifying strength. The interior contains four extraordinary pulley hoists that express the beauty of craftsmanship and ingenuity. I consider these tools as the ultimate form of local intelligence and selfsufficiency. I found the hoists when I first visited the Strickler Barn. The barn turned out to be crammed with old equipment and other stuff. The four obsolete tools were abandoned thoughtlessly on the beams. Research shows that these hoists were meant to pull up full hay-wagons in order to unload them at a point higher up in the barn. I decided to integrate them in my installation, reincarnating and re-validating them. Together with a number of current tensioners that I designed, they form an intricate play of instruments putting strain on various ropes. These ropes disappear outside through cracks in the boards where they hold up a city structure, pulling it tight against the side of the barn. The structure evolved from an 1878 map based on concession lines. It proliferates over the barn, unplanned and uncontrollable like a black urban virus determined to overgrow the barn completely. Is the ingenuity that enabled past inhabitants to develop such fascinating hoists and barns the same human ingenuity employed to develop these serial suburbs? In that case, the very ingenuity that brought forth the farmland, the pioneer villages, and its buildings filled with tools, is now responsible for its demise. This project was made possible through the support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Dutch Consul General.

singing our bon es home JULIE NAGAM

singing our bones home is an homage to the buried bodies in the Markham Ossuary. Simultaneously, this work reflects the constant relocation of Indigenous bodies that are moved, replaced, or stolen in various colonial geographies. This installation utilizes sound, projections, and sculpture to create a dialogue between the different architectural structures, the wigwam that represents nomadic lifestyles, and the wagon shed that is a symbol of settlement. My work as a researcher, scholar, and artist is to reveal the ontology of land, which contains memory, knowledge, and living histories. This installation attempts to narrate stories located in Indigenous archeological sites that lie beneath the city. These buried bones and artifacts mark the history of the land and record the human relationships to this vast landscape that are established in Indigenous “deep time stories.”1 Indigenous people recognize the power of particular spaces, artifacts, and bones because these items witness and embody much of the Indigenous knowledge of the land. This installation seeks to convey this powerful relationship between the spirit worlds and the human realm. For many Indigenous groups objects, artifacts, and bodies are considered living entities, which are to be treated with respect. Indigenous archeologist Heather Harris argues, “many native people believe they communicate with the dead at times through their lives in dreams, visions, and even encounter them occasionally in the ordinary world.”2 One of the major results of this belief system is the difficulty Indigenous people face to “consider human remains or even artifacts which are evidence of past lives in a detached manner as data or archaeological materials.”3 Therefore, the archeological sites throughout Canada have meaning and are part of both the spirit and human world. Numerous burial and archeological sites in many Canadian cities remain unseen or invisible. This inability to “see” is rooted in settler ideologies of the occupation

A S U R FA C E D E S C R I B I N G TH E VOLU M E OF EARTH DISPLACE D FOR R E DEVE LOPM E NT ON TH IS B U I LDI NG’S OR IG I NAL SITE ADR IAN B LAC KW E LL AN D JAN E H UT TON

Levelling of land is one of the first acts of colonization and settlement. Through this process of cut-and-fill, the fertile existing soil is damaged as it is moved, stockpiled, and backfilled. Levelling is a strategy which is a symptom of both sovereign property, the desires of the state to mark land as national territory, and of capitalist property, where the land is seen as a site for the extraction value that can be maximized on a tabula rasa. The Markham Museum collection contains a series of buildings that catalogue recent architectural heritage—describing changing modes, materials, and forms of construction. Some of these buildings, gathered from disparate sites, were relocated to the Museum in order to allow for processes of urban development and the transformation of the land that this requires. While buildings are memorialized through relocation and

BUYING AND SELLING DE PARTM E NT OF U N US UAL C E RTAI NTI E S , W ITH SARA F R E NCH

Markham EXT. DOWNTOWN MARKHAM – DAY The construction and traffic at Highway 7 and Town Centre Blvd serve as REENA SMITH’s backdrop as she introduces Markham. REENA, confident and composed is an example of an early 30s professional. Travelling widely with her work, she has performed in similar productions before. REENA SMITH The City of Markham, home to over 327,000 individuals, is a city in transition. Behind me is Markham’s growth centre, a politically-led developer-driven initiative, which when complete, will be home to at least 200 people plus jobs per hectare. It is an instant downtown. The future residents of this place will have access to better transit, multiple housing options and endless opportunities for work and consumption. With change comes choice. But will these residents ever get a real choice in determining how they want to live? Is choice just an illusion brought about by massive change? Markham Museum INT. STRICKLER HOUSE – DAY REENA introduces the Buying and Selling Pavilion REENA SMITH My name is Reena Smith, Community Outreach Officer for Seven Continents, a global consortium that believes, “HOW WE MEET OUR NEEDS IS WHAT UNITES US AS A HUMANITY; HOW WE MEET OUR WANTS IS WHAT SEPARATES US.” We travel around the world and work with local partners to explore citizens’ choices about how they live. Three people investigate the pavilion interior. At the far end of the room REENA discusses one of the city profiles with a visitor. Her direct address continues as a voice over. REENA SMITH Welcome to the Buying and Selling pavilion, an environment where residents can question their current choices and inform their future ones. We at Seven Continents have provided 12 different profiles from across the world showcasing the different ways nations and people build their lives and make choices. REENA and the visitor leave the main room, she guides them into an adjoining room towards a specific panel. REENA SMITH For instance, Singapore offers a different approach to housing than what the

MARKHAMAZE IAI N BAXTE R&

Throughout history & across different cultures of the world, the symbolism of the maze has captured our imaginations & stimulated spiritual consciousness & enlightenment. MARKHAMAZE emerges from a desire to create an ecologically inspired artwork that will encourage all of us to do our part to save our Mother Earth. Our personal

sensitivity to our fragile environment & our continued actions around sustainability are greatly motivated by visiting & walking the MARKHAMAZE. This project was made possible with the assistance of Helmut Klassen, Lisa Hosale, Chris Zahaluk, and Eric Reid. Generous support for the project was given by Holcim (Canada) Inc.

W H E R E W I L L YO U G O N O W ? J E F F THOMAS

In 1870, itinerant photographer J.B. Silvis travelled along the tracks of the Union Pacific (UP) railroad in the United States photographing interesting landscapes and offering portrait sittings to people in the new towns sprouting up along the rail line. His mode of transportation was a UP caboose converted into a mobile studio and darkroom. In return, Silvis’ photographs were used by the UP to promote land sales for settlement. At each new site, the caboose was parked and samples of his work were displayed on its exterior. One carte-de-visite image in particular caught my attention. It shows a group of Paiute First Nation people that Silvis photographed in Nevada. They are identified as the Winnemucca family and are posed in front of the caboose wearing European-style clothing that looks incongruous against their dark skin. This provocative image captures a world that was changing quickly for indigenous people; the caboose now stands between the Winnemucca family and their homeland. My installation for Land|Slide included photographs mounted on the outside of the museum’s railway cars and caboose, reminiscent of the way Silvis presented his work. I also displayed a series of old postcards, taken from the Markham Museum collection, in the waiting room of the train station adjacent to the railway cars. The postcards, which had photographs of Indian performers, reminded me of the Indian figurines I used in the mounted photographs. They raise questions about the public’s perception of what real Indians look like. The mounted photographs are reconfigured from my ongoing railroad series “The First Spike.” This series began in 2006 when I was riding the VIA train from Ottawa to Toronto and noticed several old train cars sitting trackside near Brighton, Ontario. A few months later I drove to Brighton where I found that the old train cars were part of a display at the Memory Junction Railway Museum. I was drawn to an old Canadian National caboose that had the words “Memory Junction” painted on its side and I posed one of my Indian figurines in front of it. The juxtaposition inspired thoughts about the untold impact the railroad had on indigenous people in North America, particularly on the Canadian prairies. The images are overlaid with questions never asked of indigenous people as they were being forced off their traditional lands, such as “Where will you go now?” While the completion of the transcontinental railroad was a potent symbol of nation building to some, the photographs raise questions of what it symbolized to indigenous people.

Unused postcard ‘Crow Indian Dancer’

Unused postcard ‘Crow Girl in Elk tooth dress’

Ser. #11369, Printed in Germany for Coffeen’s Indian Rooms, Sheridan, Wyo. Markham Museum Collection M.2002.0.1388

Ser. #11358, Printed in Germany for Coffeen’s Indian Rooms, Sheridan, Wyo. Markham Museum Collection M.2002.0.1389

Originals 1900-1907 era; colourized prints produced 1919-1930.

THE LINE DAV E C OLANG E LO AN D PATR ICIO DAVI LA

We grew up in the suburbs, Scarborough and Mississauga, on streets with names like Ponytrail and Pharmacy. But like so many of the names we give to places, they are just reminders of what used to be there. Trails might be a good place to start thinking about the history of lines and the landscape. They started out as tracings of shorelines or well-trodden paths marking the best routes from one place to another. Eventually, things got a bit more complicated and we added a whole set of lines, like rows and concessions, to mark out these things called property. And then pavement, pipes, wires, and on and on. And then one day you show up in this world, surrounded by a whole set of lines you didn’t draw and learn pretty quickly what you can and can’t do amongst them. We hated the lines that we found around us. They hemmed us in, kept us inside, in shopping malls, in backyards, on our front driveways, and in between all of these, mostly the insides of cars. Power-lines and asphalt kept things moving but kept us apart. The dream of all of these lines, fences, pipelines, roads, and sidewalks was to have the best of city and country in one place. In the end, it just felt like a constant reminder of how little there was of both. After spending time in Markham, it became pretty clear to us that we were looking at a Mississauga or Scarborough in training—an exurb quickly transforming into a suburb. The Greater Toronto Area looks like a spill of development emanating from the CN Tower. Driving up to Markham you can see the edges of settlement pushing further out. Along 16th, there is a cheap pressure-treated fence on one side and cornfields on the other—dotted with signs advertising NEW! developments. That’s exactly how people described Mississauga 30 years ago. The Line tries to represent this condition and sounds a warning or, at the very least, a quiet lament. The Line is a 60-foot-long snow fence we built in the middle of an empty field. Snow fences are supposed to shape the way drifting particles settle, usually to make things safer for cars moving really fast in a straight line. The Line is also a 15minute video we projected on a 200-year-old barn, displaced from its original home a few kilometres away. The video tells the story of that snow fence travelling around Markham, stopping at strip malls, parking lots, housing developments, farms, hydro fields, and so on, tracing the lines of signatures forged over time that write us as we write them.

The Koch-Burkholder House: constructed in 1860 on Lot 8 Concession 8 Markham; relocated to the Markham Museum grounds in 1977. Images courtesy of the Markham Museum.

R EAL AN D V I R T UA L H I S T O R I E S OF PAST AND FUTURE IN THE HERITAGE VILLAGE ALE K SAN DRA K AM I N S KA AN D JAN I N E MARCH E S SAU LT

History is very very important. We cannot possibly exist without memory. Memory makes us. Memory gives us context. Memory gives us both a notion, of course of the past, but also of the present and certainly of the future. History is no more than collected memory, so we have to put all of our memories together in order to create the phenomenon of continuity. —Peter Greenaway1 The times before and after time are the loci of emergence, of unfolding, of eruption, the spaces-times of the new, the unthought, the virtuality of a past that has not exhausted itself in activity, and a future that cannot be exhausted or anticipated by the present. This past, which layers and resonates the present, refuses to allow the present the stability of the given or the inevitable. It is the past that enables duration as a mode of continuity as well as heterogeneity. —Elizabeth Grosz2

Unlike those places that are sites of history, the heritage village exists in an in-between space, a referent to history but also characterized by its modern design. It is where history is curated into heritage, a manipulation of the past into something that can be shared and made common. Rarely however do these family-friendly sites showcase anything more than a caricaturization of the past, often with employees dressed in period costumes recreating the predictable scenes we have come to associate with pioneer living. However, hidden behind the faux-history façade there is a rich and revealing environment that tells us more than first meets the eye. As the materialization of selected and interpreted history becomes surreal—or “more than” real, fantastical even—the heritage village becomes an artifice that is familiar but also imagined and strange. Here we turn to this space of heritage—this constructed and often idealized representation of history with very particular kinds of material iterations of the past— as a site to consider the immaterial—unknown, vanished or covered-up—histories that are omitted from its narratives. Through site-specific contemporary art engagements, we can find a way of “re-imagining” the heritage village, shifting from a material legacy of pioneer living to surreal and uncanny encounters with immaterial histories and virtual memories, all in the effort to reconsider the way we build the present and future as legacies of, or responses to, the past.

A LW AY S P O P U L A R , NEVER COOL DU K E AN D BAT TE R S BY

Our piece was a full-scale diorama about coercive sex and so called “slut-shaming.” It was installed in the Maxwell House (a one-room log cabin built in the 1850s.) In the diorama, life-sized figures represent attendees at a party where a sexual assault has just been interrupted. A young girl wearing fox and cat pelts stands holding back two teenage boys while another girl lies facedown on the featherbed. One boy is recording it on his phone. Another girl stands across the room looking at the same scene on her iPad. With this work we hoped to make clear the havoc these incidents wreak for all the people involved, as well as exploring the effects technology has on the ways in which shame is experienced. We are also interested in making a critique of the way concepts like bullying, rape, and slut-shaming are presented as topical by pop-media outlets. These problems are not new, and they are not “trends” that flare and fade. To present them in this way is both trivializing and titillating. By setting the work in both 2013 and the 1850s, we hope to show the frightening durability of the ideologies and practices of rape culture.

TH E AN N U N CIATI ON 2013 C H R I S TI N E DAVI S

T Hausser housE Animate Nine hundred eggs / candling alienatioN Ultramarine automatoN Child Immaculate temperA Taxidermy I One room / four boys migratioN

210 LAND| SLIDE

STRIKE WH I LE TH E I R ON I S H OT MAR MAN AN D BOR I N S

Strike While the Iron is Hot is a spatial and formal intervention in the blacksmith’s shop. The skill of blacksmithing is characterized by repetitive formal actions to produce utilitarian objects. Upon summary review, the insertion of formal artworks into this environment appears to be a juxtaposition. Yet further investigation reveals a process-oriented installation influenced by the normative aspects of production prior to the industrial revolution, with a focus on the attempt to achieve standardization within a functional craft. The blacksmith shop is an entry point into a concept of form dictated by process. The installation is a departure from the utilitarian nature of the blacksmith shop. The production in the shop would have included anything from horseshoes, to nails, to tools. Each one of these highly functional items is handcrafted and therefore unique, but the actions required to fabricate them are a long rehearsed set of skills and techniques. The blacksmith shop is an entry point into an investigation of process that dictates form. Strike While the Iron is Hot features component artworks that are the result of a methodological process, yet with gestural outcomes. The expressionist nature of the installation relies on a formal, systematic approach that utilizes preset patterns as guides. In this way, the artworks reference the physical act of blacksmithing and are a form of production as metaphor. The installation spatially intervenes upon the interior of the blacksmith building. Transgressing the blacksmith shop, paintings and stencils are mounted on a linear framework and sculptures are placed upon a long table bisecting the space. The artworks appear gestural, but this is in tension with restrictions imposed in their creation; thus, referencing the methodological but sculptural act of blacksmithing. The artistic production is comprised of a series of interrelated form-based expressions: stencils, paintings, and sculptures. The paintings are composed using wooden stencils to control the gestural brush stroke. In this way, the rigid form of the stencil is the foundation for the expressive shapes that are translated onto the rough woven linen surface of the paintings. Paradoxically, the stencils—which refer to painterly motions—are traced, scanned, and then machine cut using modern technology, as are the corresponding sculptures that are comprised of metal, painted black: a stand in for the blacksmith’s craft. The formal compositions are re-produced in both painting and sculpture as an attempt at facsimile, and at the same time, the paintings and sculptures exist as records of a process.

Photo: Mathjis Labadie.

L A N D |S L I D E Pos s ible F utur es at t he 5t h S henzen Bi- C it y Biennale o f U rba nis m\Ar chit ect ure YAN W U

In December 2013, less than two months after Land|Slide: Possible Futures concluded its ambitious manifestation at the Markham Museum and Heritage Village, the project and its organizers were invited to participate in the 5th Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB). It was recreated in the Canada Pavilion as one of the nine National Pavilions presented at Venue B Border Warehouse—one of two main exhibition venues dedicated to a massive survey of documentaries and case studies collected both locally and internationally under the theme of Urban Border. UABB recontextualized the critical urban issues that emerged from the development of the City of Markham in a cross-cultural setting and drew a compelling comparative case study on the scale and speed of urbanization between Markham and the host city of the Biennale—Shenzhen. Shenzhen is a city built upon experimentation. It was the starting point of the Chinese economic reform in 1979, a place where communism first shook the hands of capitalism. Shenzhen was singled out to be the first of the five Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in China. It was formally established in 1979 due to its proximity to Hong Kong. The SEZ was created to be an experimental ground for the practice of market capitalism within a community guided by the ideals of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” In his article “Shenzhen – Topology of a Neoliberal City,” Adrian Blackwell illustrates the intensity of the famous Shenzhen Speed that has been driving the development in the region: Estimates in 2010 place the population of Shenzhen at 15,250,000 people. Not only is it one of the most populous cities in the world, it is also the largest municipality in the world’s biggest urban agglomeration, the Pearl River Delta (PRD), whose population of just over 50,000,000 lives in one contiguous band of urbanization, a horseshoe-shaped megalopolis. Even more astonishing than its world-historical scale is the speed with which it was constructed. In China, the term, ‘Shenzhen tempo’ once referred to its unprecedented speed of construction— one floor of an office building every 2.5 days—but it can equally be applied to the pace of urbanization itself. Shenzhen grew from an urban and rural population of 300,000 living in fishing villages and small towns to its current population in just over 30 years; this amounts to an influx of approximately half-a-million new

Map showing Kings Reserves and occupied lots as surveyed by William Berzy. Photocopy from National Map Collection, National Archives of Canada, Aug. 3, 1972.

BIOGRAPHIES

ARTI STS IAIN BAXTER& (or, “the &MAN”) has been described as the “the visual Marshall McLuhan of our time.” He is Canada’s first conceptual artist & one of the world’s leading artists. He has spent the last 50 years re-defining the Canadian & international art scene through cutting-edge conceptual, & ecological projects. BAXTER& founded the N. E. Thing Co. in 1966, & is widely influential as an artist and teacher. He is an officer of the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, & the Order of British Columbia. His artworks draw on a lifelong exploration of the creative fusion of ecology & the contemporary information landscape. ANDREW BIELER is a writer, gardener, and experimental researcher. He curates unlikely conversations between artists and other social groups and experiments with multisensory, hands-on, and embodied approaches to teaching and learning. His doctoral research examined the cultural and political thresholds of arts-sciences collaborations in the context of the development of public pedagogy about a sustainable response to climate change. Currently, he is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Sustainability and Education Policy Network at the College of Education, University of Saskatchewan. HEATHER RIGBY ’s interdisciplinary art practice arises in the interstices between Body, Culture, and Environment. Her work connects the geography of the land with the social imagination of the local and extended community through site specific installations and social media. In recent years Rigby’s focus has been on shifting the emphasis from objects in the gallery to farmer’s field as gallery, opening a dialogue to advance communication on food sovereignty within the collective culture. Her experience ranges from scenic representations of historic and contemporary narratives for the motion picture industry, to Museum and Corporate sculptural installations and teaching at the college and university levels in cultural studies, sculpture, and performance art. Currently Rigby serves on the Executive Boards of the Pickering environmental group Land Over Landings, and the Dharma Centre of Canada, a contemplative retreat centre in Northern Ontario. ADRIAN BLACKWELL is an artist, architectural designer and urbanist, whose work focuses on the spaces of uneven development produced by postfordism. He teaches at the school of Architecture at Waterloo University. JANE HUTTON is a landscape architect and teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her research focuses on the expanded relations of construction materials used in design. Hutton and Blackwell are both founding editors of the journal, Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy.

ACK N OWLE D G M E NTS

IN COLLABORATION WITH