H.2 Unsettling Site: Public Art Towards Settler Colonial Accountability
Fri Oct 28 / 15:30 – 17:00 / East Common Room, rm 1034, Hart House
chairs /
- Livia Alexander, Montclair State University
In the past two decades, much of the discussion about site-specific public art embraces or critiques the concepts of “creative placemaking,” “creative cities,” and urban development. Critics account for the ways artists have contributed—sometimes against their own interest—to the gentrification of the very neighborhoods in which they live and work. But such discussions—mostly urban-centric—often occur outside of a concern for Place in the context of settler colonialism, globalization, and environmental degradation. These, much like the “creative cities” model are both factors in, and byproduct of, neoliberal policies and the neo-capitalist system that govern contemporary democracies.
In this panel, we explore public site-specific artistic interventions that attempt to unpack, resist, and offer alternatives to the extractive approach that uses Place as a passive backdrop to a commodified artwork/cultural experience. Instead, these practices unsettle the relationship to place, encouraging critical engagement with complex histories and potential futures.
keywords: public art, settler-colonialism, creative placemaking, creative cities
H.2.1 Temporary Forever
- Livia Alexander, Montclair State University
Entering the compound of the Hansen House Center for Design, Media and Technology during the holiday of Sukkot 2014, visitors were welcomed into the Eternal Sukkah, a humble weathered structure made out of mismatched rusty sheets of metal and planks of wood roughly hewn together. Its corrugated metal roof punctuated by a modest palm frond was possibly the only visual clue that identified the shanty structure as a sukkah, as brush-made roof is one of the Sukkah’s structural requirements in accordance with Jewish custom.
In this paper, I trace artist duo Salamanca’s transformation of an informal Bedouin dwelling shack on the city’s outskirts to a Jewish Sukkah and an art object in the collection of the Israel Museum. Politically, the duo aimed to trouble the Zionist narrative focused on the return of the Jews to their promised land after many years of exile by pointing to the ways in which it inflicts a similar fate on Palestinians today forced out of their land and bringing about their exile. Through an examination of the structure’s multiple sites and iterations, I explore the associated shifting gestures of performing hospitality as it transforms from a space of dwelling to an art object. I seek to highlight how the Eternal Sukkah project troubles ideas of being at home in a settler-colonial context, whilst addressing questions of ownership and access, nomadism and permanence.
keywords: public art, site-specific, Jerusalem, Salamanca, Jahalin, hospitality, settler colonialism, Israel, Palestine
Livia Alexander is a curator, writer, and Director of the Visual and Critical Studies Program at Montclair State University. Her work focuses on the relationship between infrastructure and artistic production, urbanity and placemaking, cultural politics of food and art, and contemporary art from South West Asia and North Africa. Alexander curated and directed numerous art and film programs, exhibitions and events at renown venues world-wide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Brooklyn Museum, and many more. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Doris Duke Foundation, American Association of University Women, among others. She is currently working on a book manuscript on the politics of contemporary art and placemaking in Jerusalem.
H.2.2 Double Exposure in Belle Park
Laura Murray & Dorit Naaman, Queen's University
Driving into Kingston Ontario one might notice an unexpected sight: a Totem pole neglected and unmarked. Only after considerable investigation can one discover that the pole was carved by members of the Native Brotherhood at Joyceville Correctional Institution in 1973, and presented to the City to acknowledge 300 years of European presence in the area. The pole marks the entrance to Belle Park, a recreational facility built on a landfill. The landfill in turn was built on a wetland. And the wetland formed a rich habitat connecting Belle Island to the shore of the Great Cataraqui River. As a multilayered site marked by ongoing environmental and colonial violence, Belle Park is also a site of natural regeneration and the persistence of Indigenous communities.
In 2020, together with a historian and curator I co-embarked on a collaborative Research-Creation project that includes geographers, environmentalists, artists, Indigenous community members and other park stakeholders to bring attention to this site through performances, audio and video documentaries, audio and physical walking tours, AR, VR and more. We seek to illuminate the unseen, denied, generative, and unpredictable dimensions of this space in order to imagine possible and less-toxic futures. In this presentation, I will discuss the success and challenges of the first two interventions in the park: an AR project presenting the plentitude of fish that once lived in the river, and a time-lapse video where Indigenous and settler partners ask the Totem Pole questions about living on top of garbage.
keywords: public art, site-specific, Kingston, Belle Park, Native Brotherhood, settler colonialism, Canada
Dorit Naaman is a documentarist and film theorist from Jerusalem, and a professor of Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. In 2016 she released an innovative interactive documentary, Jerusalem, We Are Here, which digitally re-inscribed Palestinians into the neighborhoods from which they were expelled during the 1948 war. Her in-production collaborative project The Belle Park Project is situated in Kingston, Ontario, and harnesses creative practice to make visible, legible and audible colonial and environmental violence, but also resistance, resilience and re-naturalization, in a complex urban park/former landfill. Dorit is also engaged in a collaborative project on planning and mapping participatory media. She has previously researched film and media from the Middle East, specifically focused on nationalism, gender and militarism.
H.2.3 Talkin’ Back to Johnny Mac
- Erin Sutherland, University of Calgary
In January 2015, the city of Kingston, Ontario, Canada celebrated Sir John A Macdonald’s 200th birthday. John A. Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of Canada, and he made Kingston his home for much of his life. Normally, the city is full of plaques and place names dedicated to the Prime Minister, often called the “Father of Confederation.” Leading up to the 200th birthday celebrations however, Macdonald’s name was everywhere. While much of the celebration focused on glorifying his colonial achievements as central to Canada’s history, there were a number of events dedicated to critiquing that narrative, and presenting a more accurate portrayal of Macdonald to the public.
As part of this move to unsettle the celebrations, I curated a five-part performance series titled Talkin’ Back to Johnny Mac. The performance series made space for five artists, four Indigenous and one settler, to intervene in the colonial narrative present in the city and across the country in 2015. Each artist made visible their own relationship to the idea of Macdonald, and interrupted the positive (and uncomplicated) story of confederation. The series provided space to complicate and disrupt, while producing an alternative narrative.
The proposed paper will explore the role of the performance series in taking up space while enacting Indigenous sovereignty and unsettling settler narratives.
keywords: public art, site-specific, Kingston, John A. Macdonald, settler colonialism, Indigenous art, Canada
Erin Sutherland is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Calgary. She also works as an independent curator and is a core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective. Recent exhibitions include Let’s Talk About Sex, bb with Carina Magazzeni at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario and Generous Acts with Alberta Rose W. at Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre in Edmonton, Alberta.
