Please join me at the market Sunday Oct. 5th from 9am-2pm and support your local farmers.
direction - http://liberty.my-market.ca/map.html
If you're not sure why you should consider going local...come, and the farmers and I will tell you.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Media Release
Fugitive chickens to crash Nuit Blanche in guerilla art action!
“We’re crashing your corporate art event, Scotiabank!” said Twyla, Rose and Buttercup, three six-month-old Rhode Island Red/Columbian Rock cross hens who will be “free-ranging” the city’s streets in a manufactured environment during Nuit Blanche. The sisters will hit Nuit Blanche hotspots while housed in a clear, Plexiglas-covered van. The van will provide them with the amenities of home: straw, grass, food, water, free movement, and human company, while posing the question to viewers: “Where should we live?”
As family farmers feel the pinch economically, consumers face rising food costs, the environment is burdened with increasing strain, and animals suffer under the inhumanity of contemporary factory farming methods. In spite of this, numerous cities and municipalities outlaw the raising of backyard hens, as many small-scale urban farmers have discovered. In fact, Twyla, Rose and Buttercup are fugitives. They were ordered removed from their Hamilton, Ontario home last week by the city’s Animal Control division.
Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist Bryan Belanger enlisted the hens to explore the issues of farmers, agriculture, sustainability and artistic creation, bringing the dialogue up close and personal to the expected one million Nuit Blanche attendees this year. The chicken van will provide food for thought for attendees as they line up for Nuit Blanche events.
The chicken van is part of a multi-installation/multi-event art project undertaken by Belanger, who will further explore the “Where should we live?” question through a week-long interaction with the hens, who will bunk in his studio next week. The art project pays homage to renowned artist Joseph Bueys’ 1974 art action “I Like America and America Likes Me,” whereby the artist lived in a room with a coyote for three days.
“Although one may find it difficult to compare the dangers of living with a coyote compared to a hen, with the threat of H5N1 [avian flu] and Listeria looming… there is no animal more [symbolically] dangerous,” says Belanger.
Belanger is working on a documentary exploring the role of farmers, artists and livestock in contemporary society.
Supervising the chicken van to ensure the wellbeing of the hens is Yuki Hayashi, the Hamilton-based lifestyle journalist who hand-raised the hens from day-old chicks, and was ordered by the City of Hamilton to get rid of them last week.
For more information:
Journalists and photographers requesting interviews or photo opportunities are invited to contact Belanger or Hayashi on our mobile phones throughout the event so we can share location coordinates:
Bryan Belanger: 647-238-1219 - caughtincandy@hotmail.com
Yuki Hayashi: 416-803-9845
No animals will be harmed in the performance of this art interaction.
My Market Liberty Village
Please join me at the market Sunday Oct. 5th from 9am-2pm and support your local farmers.
direction - http://liberty.my-market.ca/map.html
In case your wondering, this is all paid for with my money and is not endorsed by any other parties.
By growing our own food, buying local food, art and whatever, not only do we help the environment and each other, we're better prepared in the event of a depression.
Why do I care...as it's already apparent in Mr. Harper's view, art is the first to go...
If anyone would like to contact me to work together on any project I'm all eyes and ears.
direction - http://liberty.my-market.ca/map.html
In case your wondering, this is all paid for with my money and is not endorsed by any other parties.
By growing our own food, buying local food, art and whatever, not only do we help the environment and each other, we're better prepared in the event of a depression.
Why do I care...as it's already apparent in Mr. Harper's view, art is the first to go...
If anyone would like to contact me to work together on any project I'm all eyes and ears.
Artist statement
Live Feed
Why would anyone lock themselves in a room for days with 3 hens after traveling through downtown Toronto in a transparent cube van?
Art that can not shape society and therefore also can not penetrate the heart questions of society, [and] in the end influence the question of capital, is no art.
-Joseph Beuys, 1985
Joseph Beuys, artist and activist, locked himself in a room for three days with a Coyote, to make peace with what North American indigenous peoples thought of as a God and teacher, but were mere pests to the inhabitants of the New World.
Bryan Belanger intends to modernize Beuys performance by suggesting when “we” killed the mythological tricksters, North Americans took on their persona and we've tricked ourselves into working against the land and it inhabitants, to the extent we treat our farmers like pests.
Although one may find it difficult to compare the dangers of living with a coyote compared to a hen, with the threat of H5N1 and Listeria looming being our obsession with quantity (certainly not quality) there is no animal more dangerous, and not until we hold those who bare food, land, animal and farmers, will we ever reach our potential.
After listening to the CBC program “Diet For A Hungry Planet”, I realized how ignorant I am where my food comes from and wondered if other Canadians were as disconnected as I.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/hungryplanet2.html (episode 6 in particular)
Last year, while 2 of 3 Canadians became overweight, 30,000 farmers in Karnataka, India, committed suicide using pesticides, unable to afford the food they grow. Meanwhile, our farmers are going out of business. How is it food cost have risen 3% yet farmers receive 35% less income? Something is not adding up.
I'm not a big eater though I am aware food can in some sense be a drug or a source of pleasure to many North Americans. So I will give up beer, coffee, casual cigarettes, and my physical freedom to exercise my freedom of choice, by living off local produce as well as my own product, art.
In a thriving society people and their products flourish and their surplus of positive, creative energy yield extras beyond basic necessities, such as art, craft, and music that enrich the lives of a community.
I'm suggesting if we moderate our luxuries now they're less likely to be taken from us in the future.
During this time I call on the creativity of anyone at all interested to share their views on farming.
Is Canada a better place to live because we save 20 cents an apple buying abroad? What happens when Canadian farmers shut down and we becoming increasingly more dependent on overseas farming?
“It is not necessary to paint a man with a gun, an apple can be just as revolutionary.”
-Picasso
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
