| The lure of the
local generates new solutions to new situational problems. The pixelgrain
artists are seeking to evolve the language and purpose of their
art to generate alternate narratives, knowledge sharing and social
interaction in an expanding field using mapping technology, video
and photo documents with the thematic networks of the web. Taking
as their starting point the notion that history exists in multiple
dimensions; as memory, as document, as personal recollection, as
an event involving perception, the artists Michael Alstad and Leah
Lazariuk have developed art projects around a historically specific,
and particular phenomenon that is occurring in Canada’s West
– the disappearance of that great icon of Canadiana, the grain
elevator. The grain elevator is an immense, aesthetically elegant
and formidably majestic structure. Since their initial appearance
on the prairie horizon around 1900, the grain elevator has been
the landmark par excellence of Canada’s western provinces.
Canadian author Margaret Laurence with her typically acute sensibility
called grain elevators “the churches of the prairies”.
Using the evolving and adaptive technologies of our times, pixelgrain
provides a virtual space that facilitates personal memory and accounts
relating to the prairie grain elevator. A focal point for community,
and likewise a symbol of Canada’s farm co-operative movement,
of the Wheat Pool, the grain elevator was long considered essential
for furthering the well being of community in northern countries,
where social security, health care, and other social benefits were
established under the aegis of Tommy
Douglas after the lessons of the Great Depression. As Michael
Alstad comments: “The motivation for pixelgrain stems from
my interest in architecture, geography, public space and the social
implications of new technology on our experience of place. I am
interested in examining and ‘reworking’ official narratives
and maps with personal recordings – pixelgrain expands on
two previous projects, Teletaxi
and Geostash, that
I initiated with the Year Zero One collective. The Teletaxi projects
utilised a GPS enabled computer/touchscreen in a mobile environment
to generate video, animation, sound, and games triggered by specific
mapped locations in an urban environment. Geostash was a project
that combined a GPS/internet game with the Fluxus/Situationist inspired
art-by-instruction practice that resulted in site-responsive performances
and temporary works in public spaces throughout Toronto” These
projects seek to develop technologies that work in the direction
of site and specificity so that communities can re-establish closer
cohesion using new technologies as a significant support and awareness
structure within the broader matrix of facilities and services.
Using GPS to record the actual locations of disappearing, existing
and threatened grain elevators, these intrepid artists have assembled
a considerable repository of material, both visual and vernacular,
that reflect what the grain elevator symbolized for generations
of farm communities. Less well known is the fact that many of our
society’s most progressive aspects, notably health care, and
women’s rights as encouraged by the Suffragette
movement, were phenomena generated largely in a rural context, and
the progressive results of which have now become the bedrock of
the Canadian national imperative.
More practical information enables visitors to learn that ten percent
of the grain elevators remain. Although they are sometimes considered
fire hazards, and an insurance concern, the surviving grain elevator
is a heritage concern, and some should be preserved if only to provide
examples for future generations of how their forbearers lived, and
what the architecture of farm life was in the days of development
in Canada’s west. Documenting the disappearing structures
has enabled artists Alstad and Lazariuk to communicate the ways
in which rural community are evolving through difficult transitions.
Some have adapted the grain elevator to other purposes, some are
still deciding, while still others have had them demolished. Using
the network of the web, pixelgrain is evolving interactively with
an audience that can access this found history, and likewise can
contribute to the many layers of the grain elevator’s history.
Geotagged videos and pictures on Google maps and Google Earth, as
well as a series of interviews are but part of this universally
accessible, free website. Contributors to pixelgrain have the capacity
to add their own annotations about grain elevators in the form of
text, photo and video. Thus pixelgrain is an ever expanding document
about a feature of prairie society and community that reflects the
broad changes that have taken place over recent decades.
The visual and vernacular landscape of Canada has changed in part
as a result of economies of scale. Just as monoculture, and the
increasing consolidation of farm properties has sought to increase
production, it has likewise forever changed the roots of our political
and social structures. Questions are raised about the supply demand
cycle, and who generates what and for whom. Canada's cooperative
movement, its labour and credit unions could conceivably vanish
in the future. And without some understanding of the forces that
are affecting our lives, we may not be as able to chart the course
of our future as a nation, and as a people.
- John K. Grande
PDF Format
|
