As the World Turns : Rankin Inlet, Nunavut (2009)

SYMBOLS OF CHANGE;

A collaborative process where school children in Rankin Inlet are encouraged to ‘draw out’ their vision of what symbols can be used to illustrate change. these drawings were then brought into the studio and painted with hand made gauche with a mind to putting painted emphasis on only those details in the drawings that the children elaborated. these works were supplimented by a documentary film (with the questions and process guided by the kids participating) and exhibited in the local school, a small gallery near Stroud in the UK and at the University of Toronto.

exhibit poster -2009

the exhibition in ruskin mill, gloucestershire, uk – 2009

exhibition of the film work and painted works in rankin inlet, nunavut, canada-2009

each class came out in rotation to share and celebrate the kids work (with me)

documentary film from the project:

https://foolishnatureblawg.wordpress.com/video/documentary/inuk-a-short-film-of-modern-life-in-rankin-inlet-nunavut-2009/

see this post in its natural habitat: http://www.foolishnature.org/homely/cultural/world%20turns/WORLDturns.html

WORKSHOP PROPOSAL FOR INTERESTED STUDENTS. Feb. 2009.

Background: I am an artist working in Toronto for a national charity called Evergreen, and have an exhibition organized in south-western England for mid-April of this year. I could easily sit down and paint a number of paintings on the subject which interests me, namely, the evolution of environmental/social change in Rankin Inlet. I thought it would be more interesting, and valuable, to host a series of workshops which teach through experiential education by engaging students in creating their own symbols of change. These symbols will then be drawn onto large paper, which I will then turn into a large series of paintings. The resulting work will travel with me to England where these symbols will exhibited. Half of the proceeds from the sale of this work, in England, will go to the school to buy art supplies, and this will be emphasized in the exhibition.

Workshop Content: speaking about symbols and their function in our everyday life, and allowing students time to brain-storm about the kinds of symbols they are surrounded by. This leads into the discussion of change, and writing out what kinds of change they are surrounded by. How do they think things have changed? Are changes good? Finally we begin the process of finding the symbol, the one most important detail, a detail which encapsulates all that is the story, the process of change. These is the symbols we find in groups of ten, and illustrate individually on paper and with materials that I provide. Guidance and some artistic guidelines will help to provoke creative work which will be effective, both in the sense of being a valuable learning experience through dialogue about change, but also will give some insight into the community and the lives of people who live here.

Overall Goals: I will leave Rankin Inlet, in two month’s time, with a body of work for this exhibition, as well as a short documentary film about the process. Through making this work as an artist-in-residence within the school, I will be able to provide means of creative expression for interested students which will then travel and give them a chance to have an international audience hear their unique voices. This project will both allow the students the chance to to tell their story to a large audience, and give the audience the opportunity to support the community whose work they are viewing, and contribute in a holistic way to the development of the arts in Rankin Inlet. This is the difference in intent between commercial and community art, and I strive to become a more successful community artist. Success in this sense is measured by the integration of the project within the community, and the mutual benefit found in the process.

Additional Ideas: There is a possibility, as an introduction to this workshop process to host a couple of events, short talks, film screenings, within the school. I could give a short talk on the nature of environmental change, and the usefulness of symbols to educate people about our environment. It would be valuable to also find a member of the community who could mirror this talk by speaking about the evolution of culture in Rankin Inlet. Finally, we could exhibit the work here for a short time, before it travelled to England in the end of March, giving the students who participated a chance to see how I have painted their drawings of change, while opening up the work to the public. This event could be a one night show sometime in mid-March, celebrating the achievement of the students.

Specifics: We would need thirty interested students (especially those interested specifically in the arts) to participate in two half day workshops in groups of ten. In four hours we would cover background, brainstorming, discussion of symbols and, for the last two hours, drawing our symbols of change. In between the groups would be assigned some light, creative, design based homework, before finishing in the second four hour session at a later date. Each student will have two large sheets of paper (approx. 20”-30”) provided by me on which to explore these symbols with pencil and charcoal. We will be using erasers extensively as a way of changing their symbols, and as a practical joke about making changes. These drawings will then be taken back to my studio and painted. There is an opportunity to facilitate up to three dedicated students to assist as apprentices in the project in helping with documentation, paintmaking (since they will be painted in home-made watercolor), and some of the painting process.

sandarchy

A story from the corner store…all the way into a Mongolian sand storm.

At the platform created for passengers to wait and be picked up by buses, they have no bathrooms. Not anywhere that I have seen do they have bathrooms on the ttc (not like in the UK where you pay 50p to take a pee). After waiting for what seemed like 30min but was probably 8, I had to pee so badly that all I could do was image getting off the bus 10min later and running to the house over the ice. The bus finally came, loaded and disembarked north along Broadview ave, and I was bursting by the time I was dropped off beside the corner store. For an inexplicable reason I chose to go in, instead of running home. George was particularly talkative, and began unwinding what he remembered of strong winds blowing all through his childhood in China. I was fascinated, but had to run and told him why.

The next day I went back, and asked, what were you saying about Mongolia?

“It was china but bordering on Mongolia in the north. In the winter, nevermind the wind-chill, it was normally -50c. But the wind was always blowing, it would blow you over. We had summer storms as well, but instead of snow it was sand. Sunglasses would do nothing, we would have to wear goggles just to walk, nevermind riding a bike. ”

George was looking out the window at the chilly winter wind.

“When I visited the small town I grew up in, equal distance from Mongolia and Korea, there were these old walls I remember from being a kid. It was wall after wall built to hold trees to protect the city from the ever-approaching sand, trying to wash away our town. These trees were not so big though you see, maybe up to here, ”

Indicating with his hand about 5′ tall.

“They were not tall but they were old right? Like the trees I saw by the tree-line in the arctic.” I broke in.

“Yes, yes, incredibly old, 40-50 years, but they would not grow bigger than me.” George continued, “when I was visiting this town in the 70’s I found, horribly that the fences we built to keep the crops alive had decayed, since by the fourth tier of trees you can dig a foot and find water for the new saplings. That was the saddest part, that every 5-10 years the dead trees would have to be replaced, and were then used to rebuild the fences, but people had forgotten that this was our responsibility. The fence used to run through the whole north, northeast and northwest of the city. It was immense. I cannot imagine how it must be on the interior plain, where the wind is much worse, and they have larger cities like Shanghai.”

When I arrived home the image was so strongly drawn in my mind, I put it on paper.

‘elements of green design’ – four films from Evergreen Brick Works green design exhibit 2010-2012.

it is a bit odd to compress the four films into one frame, when originally they were mounted separately 1 1/2′ apart. some of the audio which served to fill the space and compliment the busy flow through of traffic in the ground floor hallway of the center for green cities, now are competing in this 9 minute film. the footage includes years of environmental documentary footage, with compelling statements by key green leaders in toronto (the founders of auto-share and bullfrog power….) as well as architects and designers involved in the evergreen brickworks project.

see http://ebw.evergreen.ca/about/green-design

and http://ebw.evergreen.ca/whats-here/centre-for-green-cities

tar sands training camp

In 2009, from January 16th-18th, a group of activists, environmentalists and students gathered in the University of Saskatchewan, for the first of many conferences created to educate and create plans to oppose tar sands development in the province. workshops about direct action and the media, creativity and environmental justice, were punctuated by panel discussions with experts and first nations people with first hand knowledge. A healthy example of what a small group of dedicated people can begin to do to oppose the policy and destruction of established industry.

Wind Birds: part of a true tail of wind turbines, hitch-hikers, and how they effect the local birds of central France.

These paintings were made both as emblems for the 30 day journey spanning the northern half of France and into Holland back in 2007, and as sweetener to the deal proposed to those who had hired us to stand in for avian experts and create an environmental impact study to interpret how wind turbines effect birds. This task we did diligently, not fully understanding the implications to the health of the bioregion, crafting a study littered with fully articulated impacts on birds as well as lofty goals for mitigating impact-peppered with a strong disclaimer-we are artists, not biologists (see excerpts here). I exchanged the ten paintings, plus the environmental impact report for transit back to montreal on a cargo ship, and funding for my friends project in India kick-starting traditional craft economies.

each bird portrait was made half from memory, half imagination, then the closest relative identified in the field guide to birds we were seeing in the farms and fields proposed for the wind turbine project. each work is titled for this bird, and the descriptions on the back are like the game, two truths and a lie, each one holding two true facts and one imagined one.

this method of painting from imagination and memory relies on spending weeks in the field observing birds behavior and identifying them in a field guide. this sourcing of imagery for painting relies on first hand knowledge to be able to then use the strongest memories and impressions from the physical experience of being close to actual birds to paint from. this is an important distinction to me since it relies on drawing people into connection with the natural world, going out to observe and eventually find empathy with the winged sentinels of the forest.

each work is ink and watercolor, 9″ x 11″ and stitched to cardboard, as these were the most efficient materials i have found to use while camping and hitch-hiking.

a story of birds and wind turbines in the massif central mountains of France.

(if you like these images, see some preliminary sketches, in public, here)

the following photographs and text contain a true story which unfolded through the fields, mountains and motor-ways of france in 2007. there is nothing more to describe. i love to create new experiments in how imagery and commentary can stand in for conventional dry storytelling, therefore, the story may connect to the images, or it may not. see what you can imagine through the visuals and text. enjoy. in a sense the paintings above are the conclusion, as they marked the end of this adventure, and were left in the executive offices of the wind turbine company who hired us, the ceo saying as i departed; “my wife will love these….”

beginning with the rising of the sun, in a small wood holding the cold remnants of a food fire from the night before, tilly and i pack our bags.

we want to catch the Spanish transport truck driver who said he was leaving for Spain at 9 am. exiting the forest, across a mono-cultural field of unknown crops (an appropriate breakfast guess is that they are cereals) and crossing the motorway on a bridge which spans two roman roads.

the new concrete vein intersecting the old artery to the heart of Rome. in ten minutes and five degrees of warmth that the sun is giving to the awakening world, we arrive to a lack of greeting.

the packed truck parking lot from the night before is abandoned, those who have slept and drank their fill of a legally required eight hours, have moved on as the sun thought about moving up.

Tilly is disappointed. we canvas the station, her fluent French allowing more conversational requests for lifts south. this interaction cheers her. despite this, three hours pass.

am worried about losing sight of her when she is asking truck drivers for lifts while i am at the exit with my thumb out on one hand and a sign in the other. a fine line between paranoia and caution

we are settled past the stage of being frustrated at people not stopping, and silently resolve to remember there is nothing to do about it, and waiting becomes a breathing exercise, or playful ways of displaying the sign, or some skin to passing drivers. at the exact moment we forget that people stopping is a part of reality, a sedan pulls up with a trunk full of hay and horse hair.

Bert and Greg are now our vessels to flow from the forest into the Sheraton hotel at the Paris airport, to be refilled with a five course lunch.

we now, within the hour, work for a multinational company, and are a little dazzled. in the car, along the Paris vein, we are asked if we know anything about birds. and we ask fourteen questions.

we are like reporters soliciting information out of general curiosity, and are paid with much information about our escorts, and their role.

Greg is the president of INNOVENT, a company based in France that he started in 1993, before wind power was in fashion or even profitable in France.

his first turbine was erected to make his factory more energy efficient (and as an added benefit more ecologically sound, saving the world through saving money).

Greg’s first turbine tumbled to the parking lot, and the turbine blades which caused the problem are still sitting in the yard. he fixed it, and is now in the process of installing turbines all over France.

in response, we ask another question. why do you want to know if we know anything about birds?

he tells a story of a beautiful, carefree week in the French mountains looking through binoculars at avian intricacies.

being a sucker for a good story i believed it wholeheartedly, and began imagining the beauty, of a british columbian mountain, and long days of stillness and quiet in the forest, and the potential of snow and rain and needing to survive, of climbing trees for health and joy and to keep the direction in this remote alpine forest site.

tilly wasn’t responsive to his story, probably because she is more honest, and knows she doesn’t know anything about birds, except they can fly

i accept, and we take flight past the Sheraton, and into the massif central mountains.

over the Sheraton lunch we overhear, and oversee the signing of 20 million euro contracts, between the Finnish supplier and our two friends and patrons, Bert and Greg. Erkki , the fin, doesn’t disguise his excitement when his profit is signed on paper, and he immediately snatches the signed sheets as a child, but no one seems to notice.

Erkki gives gifts of vacuum sealed caribou from the Finnish wilder-land, and Greg asks Bert to get the innovent socks from the car urgently.

see a window, and jump through it to find that i would have been better off inside. i give a drawing to Erkki, hoping that it would act as a gift from Greg and Bert

the paper, on which i happened to draw wind turbine in the Scottish landscape, with connecting roads and sky as a seminal step in the HOW IS THE WEATHER project, transforms into a personal gift from me, making the lack of reciprocal gifts from Greg and Bert all the more clear.

sox are given and all is forgiven, but this moment brands itself somewhere in the back of my mind. PARDON ME, COFFEE BREAK. BRB blindly tilly and i are escorted by train to central France, a distinctly different mode of transport through the landscape, more impersonal even though your are in much closer proximity to so many people, maybe because of this.

while there were people willing to drive out of their way to take us to somewhere we needed to go when hitching, some folk wouldn’t give up the seats that our tickets had reserved for us, when asked politely. we were relegated to the play area, a mock 2D city where the children can drive around aimlessly, without any real ability to change anything, a feeling probably repeated in their teenage years.

this marks a beginning of the change in our thought patterns. we now are almost in Vichy, and have to decide what supplies we will need for the mountains, since innovent is sponsoring this bird-watching, and we have to decide what our stories are.

stories are fun to make up when you don’t have to. when we excitedly sat down on Greg’s leather seats, we were wandering Jewish artist who mumble, when we exited, we became biologists…wandering mumbling bumbling Jewish artistic biologists.

i changed my pants to prove it. we were now to play a game akin to so many others we had as rebel clowns, but without the face paint, and group of silly support to keep up in character.

we are introduced to Jean Claud Dupris, who has been waiting for two and a half hours at the train station, because he and his moustache did not get our message.

Jean Claud dupris and his moustache unceremoniously, but respectfully dump our stuff in his family van, and hustle us towards unknown destinations.

it is hard to explain to someone that we would rather be outside camping in the rain than inside a hotel, and harder if you are pretending that you are a biologist and not just a nature addicted tramp, or a pair of them.

in the leather seated horse carriage which brought us to Paris, Jean Claud was painted as a primitive man. someone who is rural. and also someone who can be somewhat stubborn, and if this is the case, we were instructed to say that we expect him to fulfil our needs to facilitate the project being completed, and if he has a problem with this, then call Greg. this, as is my general experience, confrontational position was fruitless, and made a somewhat stubborn moustache a downright donkey.

tilly was the one who had to spin the yarn, to weave out biologist’s lab coats out of our art education.this, as is my general experience, confrontational position was fruitless, and made a somewhat stubborn moustache a downright donkey.

standing in the lobby of the hotel that Jean Claud drops us in, we are asked publicly how many beds we require by the patron and her Dalmatian.

tilly, in her rhythmic ignorance of the sick minds of men, says of course, one. hysterics are building.

the ridiculousness of the situation are bursting forth, and i give a stranger drinking at the bar with a missing tooth a Monty python wink wink.

tilly misses the joke, but it sets the stage for me to see the humour in Jean Claud ignoring our pleas to sit down and talk about what we need from him.

as it was somewhat similar to sucking water from rock, we let him lizard his way out the door and home, with a 9:00 meeting planned.

five weeks have passed, and i have only recounted two days, the pace shall have to be more of a summary.

after Jean Claud leaves, tilly and i sit down to a ritual Friday night meal, real hysteria breaks in and we find perspective.

what the hell has just happened.

we awake in the woods, and are escorted through Paris’ five star food to Jean Claud and a hotel meal, from transient to responsible faster than you can say mammal.

one of our first tasks as biologists, once we managed to create enough heat to run a vehicle off Jean Claud the following day, and just are brought to a little village without our imagined needs being met, was to find out if birds were mammals.

let it suffice to say that the learning curve was an acute angle.

this is only the first chapter of a novel story, which is just as long.

in the future i would like to elaborate, to turn it into a different medium.

i would like to record tilly and i speaking about this story, and animate that with these photo’s.

but possibly simpler is better and we will let this story be as much as it is, enjoy it. i’ll elaborate if and when i make time.

making time for change; NGO’s non-profits vs. nature’s time

Have you ever tried to educate others in connecting to cycles of time older or slower than those occupying most of our schedules and visual space (checking your mobile for the time every 15 seconds) but find that the vehicles and models we use to teach about healthy culture are increasingly speeding up? Me too. I write this to advance some partial survival strategies for connecting the social/env dots as we speed along on the e-ngo train, in the hope that you will comment/improve and expand upon this strategy. But first: slow time…

Some partial examples of slower time could include those popularised by non-profit orgs, such as the life-cycles of plants or trees, how many generations have passed since toronto was covered in 2km of ice, geological events (past warming that could predict what a warmer climate would look like here), or even more extreme; the light in the night sky likely to already be extinct.

All of these are familiar concepts and are used to attempt to salve and create compassion for the natural world, to advocate for campaigns to save and protect both nature and the flow of capital into what I have recently heard named the non-profit industrial complex.

This is a rhetoric which I have embodied entirely in years past, and have based many workshops, programs, and education strategies upon: that if you can get someone in touch with nature and its rhythm, then they will slow down consumption, with slow food, cooperative social enterprises, and greener and more sustainable lifestyle decisions which will save the planet.

It should be apparent by now, since being toted as the ultimate and consummate moral guilt, that we must create change in society to reduce CO2 emissions and halt disasterous run away climate change.

With increasing exponential speed the number of e-ngo’s (environmental non governmental organisations) is growing, engaging multitudes of energised and emotionally charged youth, garnering funds from every sector and creating huge numbers of temporary stewardship events, gardens, services and spaces.
The distilled message reads: create change faster.

I write this to anyone who has first hand experience in trying to create systemic change in/with/through the non-profit sector to slow the consumer machine and put some sort of emotional leash on runaway climate change, but has encountered en-route that funding cycles, abstracted deliverables or more plainly the pace of e-ngo change moves much too quickly for plants and trees to come to maturity, or too fast for half a dozen students to watch a seedling sprout, mature and bear seed.

This ability to take the long view is learned in plant and animal husbandry through successive seasons, and if you are trying to educate people there are only so many places to plant perennials; to turn the compost, and with urban space constraints you are left with two strategic options: 1-increase the number of people participating to the max and shorten their exposure to each nature related participatory element to ensure reliable growth of the organisation or 2-observe the land for its potential curriculum already in the earth, including what is the responsibility of people to degraded land, and find a specific group who will yield greatest benefit carrying out the restoration/husbandry curriculum.

This second methodology ensures healthy linkages between education in participant’s lives and resilient restoration of the land which can only be nurtured by taking the appropriate time to allow people, plants, animals and plans to mature.

What are the principal hindrances to slowing down, elongating progress or taking the long view?
Some would say: funding cycles, the non-profit industrial complex, or the unfortunate disease of urbanity whose symptoms include the inability to understand and prioritise nature education as a strategic goal to creating change.

When I travelled back to ruskin mill educational trust in SW england to inquire about strategies for creating a curriculum based on cultivating a relationship with the land I was told: in researching the historical land use going back two thousand years, we selected activities which brought healing to the more recent industrial trauma, like coppicing or fish farming, and developed a four year immersion program for teens with special needs based on those activities.

For us to discover and deliver such depth, here in the don valley in Toronto, we would first have to address the colonial context of such work, ensuring we are not just the most recent people to see grand economic visions on land that is not ours, and then begin, slowly, to find how people in the valley’s past would create fertile soil, would steward the forest, and take care of its creatures. Despite the pace and trajectory of many e-ngo’s today, it is likely that through wilful and slow motion action, there is still room for the kind of progression towards healing that would characterize real change in my opinion. The trick is to pretend that you are participating in the cult of the deliverables enough to keep your job, but not so much that you forget the pace that projects, plants, people, and trees really grow.

P.s. Maple syrup time anyone???

http://www.foolishnature.org