garden notes Gardens of a colonial present / Jardins d’un présent colonial Ron Benner with texts by Melanie Townsend, Mireya Folch-Serra, Matthew Teitelbaum, Len Findlay, Adriana Premat, Dianne Bos, Marcel Blouin, Andy Patton, Barbara Fischer, Joe Cummins, Scott Toguri McFarlane and Gerald McMaster. London Ontario: Museum | London, 2008
books | garden works by stephanie white
agriculture colonialism geography culture economy
The great multiculturalism and immigra- tion debates fall broadly into two camps: Canada’s official but recent policy of mul- ticulturalism encourages roots in one’s na- tive country and stem propagation in one’s new country. First and second generations of new Canadians develop roots of their own, eventually self-pruning themselves from the rootstock. Immigrants to the US have, historically, allegedly, been happy to arrive as bare root stock or even cuttings, plunging into American soil and sprouting new patriotic shoots, with nary a look back. Much is made, in Canada, of this differ- ence: ours is the more ‘tolerant’ proposi- tion vis-a-vis culture, identity, language, religion. We cherish difference as a matter of appearance, rather than complete, func- tional participation at high levels. 1 At the same time, I’ve often wondered why Cana- da’s traditional national symbols tend to be landscapes and animals, not great works of engineering (of which we have many), or our cities, or our social achievements. Group of Seven paintings still appear, regularly, on new books about Canadian identity. 2 The sublime Canadian landscape transcends culture, origins, belief systems –who made the Rockies? — God? shifting tectonic plates? doesn’t matter, they are ours, ours, ours — and are on every calendar handed out at the hardware store. Alongside this Canada of pantheis- tic wilderness clichés is another kind of project. 3 Small seed companies are collect- ing heirloom seeds – for example, Russian and Ukrainian tomato varieties, brought to Canada by immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century, carefully grown and saved for generations on prairie farms, back yards and allotments: once a hedge against an alien landscape. This recovery of heritage seeds is a decided turn away from modern industrial agriculture, away from perfect uniformity. It is a turn away from homo- geneity (modernity’s social ambition for the even and equal, over unfair hierarchies). The promotion of heritage seeds is about not denying one’s imperfect grandparents in favour of mass media constructions of family. Curious that when Canada really
was full of grandparents with their accents and old recipes, it tried to unite us all in the image of heroic nature-based national land- scape projects such as the Group of Seven and the Trans-Canada Highway. Now when we have almost total access to the whole country, when one can get any kind of food in most grocery stores and we all speak in the same flat accent, now that we can fuse everything and anything, we are finding in- terest in the specific, the pure, the original, the local. Is this because we need relief from too much time spent participating in the world through our computers? Or, more darkly, is this another version of a rejection of hy- bridity? Is this part of an attraction to fun- damentals after the amorality and cultural promiscuity of globe-conquering moder- nity? origins vs complexity Since the mid-1970s Ron Benner has studied the food plants of Central and South Amer- ica – tomatoes, peppers, corn, squashes, beans – millennia-old, which spread across the world in a reverse colonialism: as newly found places were taken over, especially by Europe, importing slaves and indentured labour to hold down the land, so were plant species taken back to Europe, where their very orientalism made them desireable, even addictive. These imported species were then exported to and grown in other continents, especially Africa, as cash crops. Benner has recorded the species, found out where they came from, collected the seed and replanted them in a series of gardens, generally around London where he lives and Toronto. However, as Benner is an artist and activist, not just an agronomist, these gardens have a mission, and that mission is to discuss this complex exchange —people for food. Plants become the synecdoche of Empire. Such institutions as Kew Gardens or Jardins des Plantes were the seed banks of Britannia, or Francia, or Iberia, or Ger- mania, where appalling stories of acquisi- tion were subsumed by new Latin names on small brass tags. It is undoubtedly important that these
stories be recovered. They are the basis for indigenous land claims, medicinal plant patents and restorative justice around the world. Given the bastardised versions of eighteenth century English landscape tra- ditions and seventeenth century French parterres that generally litter our municipal parks, a 1997 stand of blue and scarlet corn in the grounds of the MacIntosh Gallery in London, Ontario marking one of Benner’s corn vectors, tells us something about corn . Corn is the subject, not the object, corn is the story not the illustration. Corn is not picturesque, it is, in Benner’s installations, an essential key to a global story of trans- migration and military adventurism that started 500 years ago and continues today. These are the roots of the food we con- sume. In Benner’s plant discussion, ampli- fied by billboards and photos, treating food as trophy and then commodity has com- pletely erased our relationship with land, lands and history — I am modern; I know nothing about a tomato except it is $4.99/lb . Not that much different from I am modern; I do not know my grandmother’s name . Benner’s work tells us that this is not that interesting a position to take. Gardens of a Colonial Present / Jardins d’un présent colonial (London Ontario: Museum | London, 2008) documents thirty years of Benner’s study of the vectors of indigeneity, of colonialism, of hegemony and power, of genetic technology, of nationalism; a study conducted in plants themselves. Benner’s garden installations include billboards, videos, photographs and archival referenc- es, but first and foremost they are plants, growing outside, in the weather. The proof is in the horticulture, not just the written manifesto. This book is composed of a dozen arti- cles, essays and interviews by a number of people, some of whom address Benner’s work directly, others who write all around his subject, bringing in other case studies, other examples of plant physiology, curi- ous histories and technologies. Very use- ful is Barbara Fischer’s interview with Ron Benner, as Benner is generally the most
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On Site review 21: stormy weather
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