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In January 2001, I received an informal invitation by the architectural duo Heisenberg to submit a proposal for a public art project to the Redevelopment of the Gorbals Partnership in Glasgow. The Gorbals are widely recognized as one of the most depraved areas in the UK, and are currently the site for a major capital improvement and a redevelopment program that involves new architecture, a new demography, and also art.
On my initial site visit, it was clear I would not be interested in adding decorum to an architectural project. The 1% relationship between architecture and art, no matter how generous, doesn’t really do it for me. Permanence and Public Art is another dichotomy in my mind. So instead I asked to occupy an area of wasteland for the limited period of five years to create a wildflower meadow. I would attend to the project over this time, after which it would cease to be art, and the land could either be used for other things, or the meadow could remain unattended. My proposal was presented as the singular statement above, one line of poetry, and was received with enthusiasm by the redevelopment partnership.
In May 2001, I received an initial commission to prepare the work, to source for skill, material and prepare a growth and production schedule. The commissioners had defined a suitable site behind the distillery on the curve of Adelphi Street, facing the botanical gardens on the posh side of town, and along the river Clyde that flows through and divides Glasgow both physically and metaphorically speaking. Beautification was definitely called for and we agreed on creating an absolutely spectacular, over-the-top meadow at this location. In the meantime, I also located Ted Scott, a retired schoolteacher, who runs a small wildflower business with particular attention to local species. Ted applies the ‘plug plant’ method, which means he collects his own seed, plants it first in little plastic containers and places the successful plants out—one by one—on large areas of land. This method beats, by far, the more common style of meadowing, based on the assumption that in order to sow a meadow, all you have to do is dump a bag of commercially mixed seed over an area of grass.
With Ted, I had long discussions about modern appropriation of the traditional meadow, a formerly natural result of the annual farming cycle, involving crops, grazing animals and land that rests at regular intervals—a complex situation which hardly exists anymore. To successfully create a meadow these days, on unprepared land, is as difficult as planting a rose garden—the result of pure artifice, and lots and lots of Love.
A typical conversation between us would go:
Aleksandra:
Ted! I completely forgot about one really important thing. How do we water the meadow ???
Ted:
Oh, don't worry, we are next to a river, my dear.
Aleksandra: But, Ted! How do we get the water OUT of the river???
Ted: With a bucket, my dear.
A true meadow doesn’t just stop with the flowers. Ted knew almost exactly how many plants of what kind would be needed to support a certain amount of butterflies, a certain amount of birds and eventually small animals of various kinds. It was an absolute thrill to visit the land with him, where he would point to existing weeds and beg us to keep them. We made up the production schedule and planned on involving community groups and school children in assisting with the various tasks ahead of us.
But by the time the partnership presented all projects to the public and press, during an exhibition at the Lighthouse in Glasgow, August, 2001, my initial statement had been censored from all press materials, the poster and the wall, where I had asked that it be presented as a sheet of paper next to Ted’s plug plants. I was told my statement would bring the whole project bad publicity and be at odds with the funding bodies as well as with the local community groups which it apparently patronized. Other artists in the show were also disturbed by it and at some point the argument went so far as to claim my statement celebrated teenage pregnancies and sex crimes on the riverbank (of which there apparently were plenty). So much for beautification. More than a discussion about the statement itself, the spread of the paranoia about ‘what other people would think’ had preempted the work’s execution, and we will never know who patronized whom in the end: the commissioners, the locals, the media or the artist.
I was given a choice to either continue the progress with the meadow (which all parties involved strangely still found highly desirable), without my statement, or to print my statement as I had initially requested but lose the commission. In November 2001, the statement was published in Untitled, London, ed. Polly Staple, No. 26, 2001.
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