My work centres on development, evaluation and teaching (including research supervision) of innovative environmental planning and design methods extending to contemporary visual culture including,
· networks of open space and protected areas, especially on islands with forest, initiated by indigenous communities and governments and related joint management,
· conception, development, and curation of related public, environmental, and site-based art along with photographic document,
· planning and design of cultural infrastructure especially networks of public art in public space often involving indigenous communities,
· biodiversity conservation and related site planning and environmental horticulture,
· urban sustainability strategies and practices and policy for those transitions especially involving indigenous community and ecological restoration, and
· critical social and governance theory for open space as part of environmental planning and design.
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My technical expertise is in the following fields:
regional ecosystem recovery strategies and intergovernmental frameworks especially involving indigenous governments;
living material in environmental and site-specific art works and related ‘landart’;
collaborative art practices as part of community development often with a focus on indigenous communities;
environmental and social impact assessment;
site planning and related environmental horticulture;
stakeholder analysis especially for historically marginalized demographics such as indigenous communities, women, and cultural and sexual minorities;
knowledge and priorities of indigenous communities in land use decision-making;
social and institutional factors in design of public space and related use studies and public consultation;
sexual minorities, public space and neighbourhoods;
sustainability strategies and cultural infrastructure;
best practices and guidelines for sustainability especially certification processes such as LEED and Sustainable Sites and environmental horticulture and agricultural practices;
remote sensing, GIS, and decision for support environmental assessment, planning and design;
international instruments of environmental policy including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Heritage Convention,and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
conservation of heritage landscapes and neighbourhoods;
cultural infrastructure as part of community development and public art and site-based art as part of urban design;
photographic documentation of communities, environmental concerns and design issues;
§ integration of site-based art into public space and broader landscapes; and
§ related social and cultural theory extending to art and design criticism.
I am currently studying and engaging in participatory methods and ‘mediation’ in the making of contemporary visual culture as part of deeper engagement with and development of communities.
CULTURAL PRODUCTION
media
- interventions, spanning performance to public art to urban design and landscape architecture, in public space and related ecosystems
- configurations of photographic imagery, drawings, and text in both books and other publications and in larger forms in exhibition spaces and installations
- videos especially heavily edited clips and loops, from old cellphones, installed indoors and outdoors
- black and white and colour designs and plans for sites and related installations
- site renderings involving drawings and photographs
- published articles and books often combining text, photographs, drawings and plans
concerns & practices
- public art combined with ecological restoration often referencing environmental and cultural histories and the tensions between indigenous, colonial and postcolonial spaces with a focus on the West Coast of Canada
- Canadian indigenous movements of contemporary site-based and public art with a particular focus on my own heritage, Métis with deep family roots in north-western Canada, and the Coast Salish communities in which I mainly grew up on the south coast of British Columbia
- photographic and video documentation, renderings, and associated text-based essays of communities, ecosystems, and urban and landscape histories with a thirty year focus on tensions between indigenous, colonial and post-colonial cultural landscapes particularly in British Columbia
- contemporary multimedia treatments of indigenous traditional knowledge, colonial history and contemporary cultural fusions as played out across communities through networks of public art combining video, photo-based documentation, more subjective photography, drawings, maps, text and live presentations (often rifting on participatory approaches to community development)
- research on and design responses to gender and sexual politics, decolonial, indigenous, multicultural experiences, and social conflicts in public space represented through photographs, drawing, plans, and digital mapping
- research methods on the aesthetic dimensions of community histories, cultural landscapes and ecosystems, and related questions of food, crops, species, and cultural aspects of botany and landscapes
- development and use of archives (increasingly linked through on-line postings and sites) as part of artistic practices and production
- imaginary and unsolicited designs of networks of open space and associated urban design and public art often employing video, montage, geographic information systems, satellite imagery, visualization and reworking current and discarded digital technologies
- curating and related research for exhibitions, books, and on-line examinations of communities, ecosystems, and urban and landscape histories