Rory McDonald (images editor), and Kathleen Irwin (text editor) Sightin/Citing/Siting: Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan: Theorizing Practice

Abstract

RORY MCDONALD (images editor), and KATHLEEN IRWIN (text editor) Sighting/Citing/Siting: Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan; Practice Regina; University of Regina/CPRC Press, 2009. 207 pp Sighting/Citing/Siting serves as an archival document of a one-day interdisciplinary site-specific event, entitled Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan that took place at the Claybank Brick Plant National Historical Site in southwest Saskatchewan on 2 September 2006. The publication examines and theorizes the results of bringing together over fifty interdisciplinary artists from across Canada, who created work ranging from sound installations, multi-media, earthworks, and performances. The event and subsequent publication aims bridge aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities both of whom were and continue be spiritually and geologically connected the site and its surrounding landscape. How do we provoke a desire remember something when there is no personal connection it? (96). In the producing of Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan the collaborating artists visited the site and used reflective experience of the architecture of the Claybank Brick Factory and the surrounding topography known as Dirt Hills as inspiration for creating an original work. The aim of the original creation was harness the spectators' perceptual filter in recognizing their physical and connections a location few could have accessed during its productive years as the brick plant. The Claybank Brick Factory opened in 1914 manufacturing face brick for such historical sites as the Chateau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec City and the Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon; the labour was documented as brutally manual. After World War II the need for brick manufacturing declined considerably, eventually resulting in the closure of the plant in 1989 due global economic pressures. In 1994 the site was designated a Provincial Heritage Property and a National Historic Site. To this day the site displays its authenticity: most buildings are intact and the machinery is restored and functional. The surrounding landscape of the Dirt Hills, which more strongly evidences aboriginal history, provided another resource of inspiration and cultural cross-purposes. The participating artists explored themes including cultural exploitation, land expropriation and the displacement of aboriginal cultures (6). These themes further highlighted the site's aboriginal historical footprint juxtaposed against the factories' economic gains and losses. The only restrictions placed on the artists were to leave no lasting trace on the site, further illuminating the ephemeral quality of such a project. The publication is divided into two components--Practising Theory and Theorizing Practice. The practicing theory documentation includes an exquisite photo log with adjoining artists' statements for each installation, an illustrative map of the site and its adjoining landscape, and an archival copy of the performance text. An enclosed DVD provides the reader with some visual insight into the look and feel of the daylong performance; it also includes interviews with a few of the collaborators and a slide show highlighting the sites influences on the project as a whole. The theorizing practice component is made up of fourteen essays, divided into five sections and written by the various artists, producers, spectators, academics, historians, and members of the aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities who were either directly involved in the creation or research and curatorial elements. …