UPDATE: Square Victoria Intervention

After one whole weekend, the Begonias are still there and therefore some of us have felt the desire to water them and continue this intervention.  Perhaps the particular aesthetic qualities had something to do with their instilled presence on the Queen Victoria statue and perhaps the fact that during the weekend this square is significantly less used.  We will monitor this and let you all know how the intervention is going.
The wind has taken three of the First Nation's language tags. The ones remaining are:

Eskaleuit
Algonquin
Iroquois
Wakasham
Sioux
Kutenai

Jennifer from our group thought watering them in situ would be a snap as there is a fountain nearby, but she miscalculated the direction in which the water flowed. That it, it flows up.
So after some consultation with a couple of amused lunch eaters I simply took them down from their perches and placed them UNDER the fountain. Voilà.

Square Victoria. Icon of Empires: An Intervention

Square Victoria began its vocation as a Victorian garden in 1860 and became an icon of Empire when the statue of Queen Victoria was inaugurated in 1872. Its current role is that of a city park linked to those international and banking institutions that occupy the buildings around it. Yet, the name of the square that is reminiscent of a monarch that ruled when Britain was a colonial world power has been retained. The Hector Guimard Metropolitan sign made in 1900 for the Paris Metro and installed at the Saint-Antoine stairway of the Metro in 2003 links the square to France. The Tai Chi sculpture by the Taiwanese Ju Ming installed in the square in 2006 heralds the entry into world commerce of Asia as a major player. In its present role, Square Victoria occupies a public place that has become an icon of globalizaton.  

The square was the object of an artistic intervention on 16 June 2011 when nine begonia potted plants were placed on the pedestal of the statue of Queen Victoria. The begonia was chosen because it has come to lead a double life: As an indigenous plant that survived over the millennium and self-propagated on its own into different species as nature intended, and as the result of various hybrids created by genetic manipulation since colonial Europeans discovered it. Within the context of Square Victoria’s history and location the begonia was the appropriate medium for the intervention because its twin history can be used to show the dual role of Square Victoria: As a city park and as a representation of global capitalism. The purpose of the intervention was two-fold: As a reminder of how colonization pushed aboriginal populations off their land to take their natural resources, and to give awareness that global institutions are financing the exploitation of natural resources regardless of the ecological consequences.

R Portanier 

Bois-de-Saraguay: History, Heritage and Ecology in Montreal’s ‘Forgotten Forest’

On the West Island, there is a dense and ecologically diverse forest situated in the middle of the suburbs. The Bois-de-Saraguay nature park has been described as a 'forgotten forest' (read the Montreal Gazette article here) since so few Montrealers know about it. Recently, however, the city has decided to make the site more publicly accessible through the addition of trails, observation areas, and educational signage.

The Bois-de-Saraguay is often described as a space of pristine nature. What is less acknowledged is that the site has been shaped by human history as well. The Mary Dorothy Molson House, located in the northern section of the woods, represents this history. The neo-Georgian estate is one of several summer houses built in the early twentieth century by Montreal’s wealthy anglophone elite, who sought large, open spaces for leisure activities such as hunting, polo and golf. The forest likely would have been cleared for further residential development if it hadn’t been for these exclusive uses of it. The Molsons, MacDougalls and Refords might deserve a certain amount of praise for the role they played in preserving the woods. Beyond that, however, we may also critique the power relations behind this landscape, and view it as a space in which several of Montreal’s most powerful families controlled the movements and activities of others for their own benefit.

I wanted my intervention to respond to the interrelated histories of culture and ecology that have shaped the Bois-de-Saraguay. I decided to make seed-bombs out of clay in the shape of Molson beer cans, which I used to mark particular sites, including a road that once led to the polo club, and the Mary Dorothy Molson House. I used zinnias, asters and sunflowers, which will attract birds, bees and butterflies, but which will also stand out as garden plants rather than ‘wild’ flowers. I saw this as a way of turning a common form of park litter into something that in its sculptural form, has cultural and historical meaning, but in its sprouted form, will create beauty and use value for non-human nature.

- Noni Brynjolson

Work, Gender and the (Re)articulation of Public Space: Reconsidering the Industrial History of the Lachine Canal’s Atwater Market Sector

This research project will explore the Atwater Market sector of the Lachine Canal in the southwest area of Montreal. Specifically, the relationship between the Market and the Lachine Canal—in both its past and present uses—will be examined in order to develop a heightened awareness of how social, cultural, political, historical, and economic factors help shape, and are also shaped by, the transformative nature of this public urban landscape. The central questions that have helped guide my research project and shape my Intervention are: what kinds of narratives, histories, and memories—both visible and invisible—are expressed in the spatial qualities of the landscape? In what ways are signs and material traces of the Canal’s industrial, working-class past embedded within the landscape—in both its past and present manifestations? How is the relationship between leisure, labour, and gender articulated—socially, culturally, historically, spatially, architecturally? How might the space be understood as a kind of “living archive” replete with various, and often conflicting, “situated knowledge(s)”? The aim of my Intervention is thus to make the Lachine Canal’s working-class histories and memories visible by using the railway tracks along the Canal’s banks as the setting for a re-reading and re-articulation of this particular landscape. By placing simple, everyday items that would have been used by the working class (men, women, and children) along eight railway tracks, I hope to re-imbue this industrial landscape with a sense of the human labour and lives that have shaped—and continue to shape—this complex and multi-layered space.  

-Alexandra Kelebay

Exhibition at Concordia University about Montreal's Urban Green Spaces

The exhibition will be mounted on Tuesday, June 28th 2011 in the Concordia University Art History department's vitrine case on the 3rd floor of the Engineering and Visual Arts building.


Address:
Department of Art History, 3rd floor, Engineering-Visual Arts Comples
(near 3.819)
Concordia University
1515 de Maisonneuve Blvd Ouest, corner rue Mackay
H3G 1M9


A vernissage will be held on the same day - Tuesday, June 28th 2011 from 5 to 7 pm. 


Come one, come all!