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Seasonal disappearing fountains and running water at Nathan Phillips Square.

Seasonal disappearing fountains at Nathan Phillips Square.

Marie France Forcier, “Scars Are All The Rage.”

A plaque affixed to one of the “Freedom Arches” that cross the Reflecting Pool (turned skating rink) at Nathan Phillips Square. I have never noticed this plaque before or that the arches are named after and dedicated to those who fought for freedom or died from lack of it, not mentioning a specific instance or war although perhaps WWII is the prominent reference. Also did not know there was a slab of the Berlin Wall at the base of the arch!

Especially interesting to me are the last sentences: “Only in freedom can the Human Spirit soar. Against the Human drive for freedom nothing can long succeed.” This is certainly pertinent to sex trafficking, which robs people of the freedom to their own body and will, and this may be an existing element of the Square that can be echoed in an element of the memorial design, perhaps as a corresponding plaque in the vein of Jenny Holzer - this would not be to denigrate the original dedication of the Freedom Arch plaque but to raise awareness that there are people who do not have this very “human freedom” in another context, and right in the city of Toronto itself, hidden, a major hub for sex trafficking.

Some light digging into Nathan Phillips Square, the site of my memorial project, reveals that it is still in the stages of its revitalization, begun in 2007, hence the construction crews, underground excavations, and fenced off areas still surrounding the square. This may reinforce the site-specificity of my project, which aims to bring greater public awareness to domestic sex trafficking and to provoke reactions to the issue, in relation to the play of invisibility/visibility and the politics and money (the renovations have unsurprisingly gone far over budget and are behind schedule) behind such a revitalization of a major civic square. The revitalization was initiated to make the site more functional, but was also - and arguably, largely - undertaken in a symbolic sense to restore the site as a point of city pride. Such symbolic projects like the relocation and expansion of the Peace Garden in the square are undertaken because their results are visible and easy to recognize - while there are actions that could have been taken to change policies with that same effort, time, and funding.

(image: http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default/files/imagecache/display-slideshow/images/articles/2013/06/8341/urbantoronto-8341-27328.jpg)

Freedom of expression for whom? At Nathan Phillips Square.

Jenny Holzer. Using plaques and “official” looking forms, which suggest authority, to display different kinds of messages. Taking the form of ideological structures and revealing those structures by the text, turning them inside out.

Jenny Holzer’s projections pt. 2, note how the distortion of the words along the landscape adds pathos.

Jenny Holzer’s projections

Ana Mendieta, Untitled (People Looking at Blood, Moffitt) (1973)

what needs to be memorialized?

paul monette, "here"

everything extraneous has burned away this is how burning feels in the fall of the final year not like leaves in a blue October but as if the skin were a paper lantern full of trapped moths beating their fired wings and yet I can lie on this hill just above you a foot beside where I will lie myself soon soon and for all the wrack and blubber feel still how we were warriors when the merest morning sun in the garden was a kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all death it turns out war is what little thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home oh sweetie will you please forgive me this that every time I opened a box of anything Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was the worst I’d think will you still be here when the box is empty Rog Rog who will play boy with me now that I bucket with tears through it all when I’d cling beside you sobbing you’d shrug it off with the quietest I’m still here I have your watch in the top drawer which I don’t dare wear yet help me please the boxes grocery home day after day the junk that keeps men spotless but it doesn’t matter now how long they last or I the day has taken you with it and all there is now is burning dark the only green is up by the grave and this little thing of telling the hill I’m here oh I’m here

"history is not sedimented," the very eloquent michael greyeyes.

the reference to sediment has a material quality, of grit and sand, and though history is not sedimented (or buried - rather, it is in our living skin) the conceptualization of it as grains of something material makes it concrete in an important way (but i'm not sure how to describe this yet).

sans soleil (1983), chris marker

Anna Pavlova (1907), The Dying Swan.

Aside from the music's role, a study in how the body and gestures can convey meaning and emotive potential.

JANET CARDIFF & GEORGE BURES MILLER - ROAD TRIP (2004)

http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/roadtrip_video.html

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Road Trip (2004).

Finding a carousel of slides once belonging to George's grandfather, the two artists converse while the old photographs are projected, trying to identify the meaning (if any) behind the order and taking of the images in the first place. Fragmentary memory and reconstruction.

Images & information: http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/roadtrip.html

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