“No Such Thing as Away”

“No Such Thing as Away”
The Politics of Public Space

(Cover Story, LOLA Magazine, Winter, 2000-2001.)

Is it art–or is it the “defacement of city property”? Who owns city property? What’s garbage, and where does it go when you throw it away? Who has the right to put their images in public space? Artists? Garbage workers? Environmentalists? Corporations advertising? And who gets to decide?

In a word, who has the power?

All questions raised when a team of artists, members of the Toronto Environmental Alliance and sanitation workers from CUPE 416 got together last summer to brainstorm about work, art and garbage. The result: three garbage trucks painted with murals on both sides, rumbling through our city streets. Each truck had a recycling message, promoting the wet/dry recycling campaign CUPE 416 and TEA have been advocating for years.

There was a gala feeling at the August 21 press conference, hosted by Rita Davies of the Culture Division. It was a win win win . The Culture Division collaborated with the Works Department. For once, the story was about the cooperation between trade unionists and environmentalists, instead of the usual sensationalism about tree huggers versus loggers, jobs versus baby seals, etc. And the trucks just looked marvelous, great colourful beasts in the August sun. The artists were pleased, the sanitation workers were proud, the environmentalists were tickled pink.

But timing is everything, and it was Kirkland Lake crisis time, critical mass of garbage time and election time. On the 6 o’clock news, Global, CBC and City TV all spun the painted trucks as a protest against the decision taken by City Council early i Augustto ship Toronto’s garbage north to an abandoned mine in Kirkland Lake. Then all hell broke loose. Mayor Mel Lastman had originally planned to drive one of the trucks at the launch, be he was in Rome visiting with the Pope. But given the timing, and the way the media played it, There were rumblings from the Mayor’s office. Councillor Bill Saundercook, Chair of the Works Committee, demanded that all three trucks be recalled by the works department and painted over.

One panel in particular enraged him. The lead artist on this truck, Grace Channer, and her crew of garbage workers and environmentalists, had chosen the theme of water . One side of the truck depicted what will happen if we continue to pollute our water, and the other showed the same scene with clean water. On the “bad” side, a train full of garbage is seen leaving Toronto, which we recognize by City Hall and the CN Tower. A trio of porcine looking men in suits clutch a fistful of money. The team of artists meant to imply that there was money to be made by private industry from the removal of garbage. The point was made by T.E.A. employee Katrina Miller, who had worked on the truck, on the CBC news broadcast August 21.

Saundercook thought that the images were of politicians, and said so in a Metro Morning interview on CBC radio on August 29. Draw your own conclusions about the eye of the beholder. Also, about who gets to decide that their interpretation of art prevails and has the power to enforce its erasure. Who owns those trucks? Who owns the busses, if not the taxpayers, us, and who asked us if we wanted them slathered over with corporate ads?

There was a hastily convened press conference; there was all kinds of behind the scenes negotiating, and in the end, only the one panel was painted over. The remaining two and half are still driving around. It was the dog days of summer, the last week in August. There was a bit of media attention and then it blew over.

But as project manager and cultural worker Min Sook Lee says, when it comes to garbage, there’s no such thing as away. The art got trashed, but by the time you see this, it will be back, re-painted on the side of the Bamboo, safely and ironically protected by private property from the censoring axe of philistine politicians. (Four phone messages tohear Mr. Saundercook’s point of view for this article wre not returned).

And really powerful ideas about art, collaboration, voice and the politics of public space take on a life of their own. I work at the Laidlaw Foundation, coordinating a program called Take Part! Initiatives in Cultural Democracy. The program is all about the transformative power of collaborative artmaking with artists and non-artists, about the politics of voice, and putting art at the centre of civic debate. Laidlaw funded this project, conceived by Min Sook Lee, and the partnerships it generated, went beyond our fondest hopes for the goals we had set. Councillor Saundercook’s high-handed actions just ramped up the issues and made the discussions all that more interesting

Now, how about every neighbourhood in the city gets together, residents, garbage workers, artists and environmentalists all talking with each other. People design their own community icon. People get together and paint. And we have 140 painted garbage trucks putting Toronto on the map. Instead of getting the bad rep we’re getting for dumping our garbage in the north and censoring our artists, we’ll be renowned for our recycling, our civic cooperation and our amazing public art.

*****NOTE

LAIDLAW FIRST OFFERED TO FUND THE REPAINTING OF THE MURAL BUT THEN WANTED IT POSTPONED UNTIL AFTER THE NOVEMBER 13 ELECTION. THE OTHER PROJECT PARTICIPANTS WERE ABLE TO SECURE AN ANONYMOUS DONATION AND WERE PLANNING TO GO AHEAD IN LATE OCTOBER.