Digging for victory

Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates regional prototype garden #2: Lakewood, CA, 2006, owners: Foti Family, produced in collaboration with Millard Sheets Gallery for the exhibition Fair Exchange and Machine Project, Los Angeles

Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates regional prototype garden #2: Lakewood, CA, 2006, owners: Foti Family, produced in collaboration with Millard Sheets Gallery for the exhibition Fair Exchange and Machine Project, Los Angeles

There's a fascinating article by Berin Golonu on artist Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates and other similar initiatives online at Art Papers. Haeg famously believes in tearing up people's front lawns to create something less dull and water-greedy and more productive from them. He created an intervention last year at the Tate's Turbine Hall along these lines.

The greening of suburban American has become a major issue in the US, as Peter Head mentioned in this recent Arts and Ecology interview. Art Papers also points to the work of John Bela's collabration with the US Slow Food Nation on San Francisco's wonderful Civic Center Victory Garden, which in turn drew inspiration from Amy Franceschini and the Futurefarmers organisation she founded. The article also namechecks NY architecture practice Work.ac and their ideas of the Public Farm.

Golonu gnaws briefly over the but-is-it-still-art question:

Scholar Victor Margolin considers this question in his catalog essay for the exhibition Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art. "How do we think about art that moves from discourse to action, art whose intent is to produce a useful result," he writes, and by what criteria do we evaluate this work?... In the never-ending debates on the difference between art and design, the distinction usually comes down to the primacy of discourse in artistic practice.... But when artists want to achieve social results without identifying themselves as designers, how should the critical community respond? "Once artists enter a realm of action," he continues, "it is difficult to characterize their projects differently from those of other actors such as landscape designers or even architects... the discursive has spilled over into the practical, and the practical has become more discursive..."

... but without getting anywhere much. The point isn't whether it's art or not, but the fact that it's happening and as a movment appears to be reaching a kind of critical mass.

EDIT:

In addition to the above, Michaela Crimmin reminds me of Jeremy Deller's work on allotments in Berlin, which fits into the same picture... and looking at David Barrie's most recent blog post, there's also the example of Dott07's City Farming project in Middlesborough:

In the project, people grew food in vacant public places across the town, took cookery classes in neighbourhood centres and then, come the final harvest, cooked a 'town meal', in an event attended by over 8000 people and curated by artist Bob and Roberta Smith.

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Digging for victory

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