Neighbourhood Planning
PROJECT CREATES ART FROM DESIRES OF CORE RESIDENTS
by Bart Gazzola
This text dominates one of the images produced by local artist Clark Ferguson, as part of his contribution to Utopias: Revisioning Saskatoon Core Neighbourhoods, a project facilitated by AKA Gallery and paved art and new media, under the wider umbrella of Site and Subject: Research, investigation and proposals for the Riversdale district of Saskatoon. There’s been an abundance of focus lately not just on public art projects in the city, but also on how these combine with the “housing boom,” or “housing crisis,” depending on your point of view. As well, the city has started to think about how its new economic status might be reflected in its cultural quarters: hence, projects like Artlab and the Crescent, and so on.
As always, these type of projects — those which offer commentary on at-risk neighbourhoods, for lack of a better term — fall into two categories: parachuted artists and ideas that are visible briefly and then disappear, so we can all safely forget about them (and never go back to that section of the city if we can help it, just watch it on the news), or those that genuinely engage the people in those areas, assist and amplify their voices, and have a sense of the need for change.
Now, I hate the word “utopias,” as it is meaningless — much like referring to the 1950s as a “simpler time.” But what’s successful about Ferguson’s work here is that he abdicates his voice for those of the participants: Ferguson stresses that each image is “created through collaboration with the individual; however, I can't imagine that I ever really hit their idea on the nose, but I do create a visualization and help the collaborator imagine their image from what they’re saying. It's an interesting process: it's back and forth and ends when we both say 'Yeah, that's it.'”
Ferguson began from a simple place — by asking residents what they would change about their neighbourhood — anything at all, with no finger pointing or complaining, but also no limits. This began with posters distributed to encourage participation, but “man in the street” interviews were also needed to increase participation: Riversdale / Pleasant Hill, King George, Caswell Hill, and Meadow Green were the sites Ferguson focused upon. The much-maligned Barry Hotel was a flashpoint, and the whispers of the City’s plan to simply raze the place to ground were already about. But the Barry was an interesting example of the NIMBY notion in reverse — exemplifying the attitudes of some Saskatonians from other, “better” neighbourhoods, many of whom believe “bad things are tolerated in these areas, even if not consciously accepted.”
Ferguson holds up a mirror to this kind of attitude, responding to the desired changes he was given by participants by taking images of these things as they appear in other areas of the city, and using various technologies to integrate them into the “final” image. Of note, one of the suggestions for what is needed stepped apart from the usual requests (grocery stores, other social amenities associated with gentrification, or “a place to sit down”) — the suggestion for a brothel in an area with a significant number of sex trade workers.
This, of course, is one of those topics that folks in “polite company” (including, obviously, politicians) become very uncomfortable with. To discuss the problem there would be to acknowledge its existence, which is only one scary step away from having to acknowledge the factors that lead to it, such as how many sex trade workers have “real” jobs, yet are still forced onto the street in order to make sure they can pay their rent or feed their children. Again, while some may say housing crisis and some may say housing boom, I’m pretty sure most dedicated right-wingers don’t think much about the above when they say ‘If you’re bitching about rent rates, go out and get a job.’
Throughout Utopias, the invisibility of the artist is key: the billboard displaying the project, which will be mounted on the facade of AKA / paved, is 50 ft. by 60 ft., and will be divided up into a number of images of each of the participants’ personal “utopias” — and will carry contact info, to allow passersby to participate. Importantly, it’s driven by neighbourhood residents and neither static nor fixed, as it will change as the project progresses — just as a neighbourhood itself should grow and change as designed by its members, not the politicians or property-flipping scum we’ve come to accept too quickly as a factor of our economic boom.
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