Filming distractions

Dreams for a Dairy Farm

January 22, 2010
Preliminary Interview with Dad

Kathleen: What’s going to happen to the farm once you decide to retire.  Especially since our family will no longer be a farming one.

Dad: Oh, I don’t know.

Kathleen: What do you mean?  Wait–do you think one of us (my two sisters and I) will take it over?  Seriously?

Dad: Well, who knows.

Kathleen: Dad, you honestly think one of us might swoop in a save our family livelihood?  Well, okay, fine but I’m turning it back into a dairy farm.  [laughs] How much would that cost—uh, nevermind cost.  But it’s going to be organic milk sold locally.  There’s gotta be a market for that right?  And we can name it something….well, what would you call it?

Dad: Fa Milk.

Kathleen: Why Fa Milk?  How do you spell that?  F-A-H or F-A–

Dad: F-A.  Fa Milk.  So when you go out you can say, “I’m going out FA MILK!”.

Kathleen: I’m not sure I get it.

Dad: You know, Fa Milk.  For milk.  Going out FOR milk.  Fa Milk.

Kathleen: Uh…maybe….well, we’ll see.

I found this exchange quite hilarious.  And note, it’s not word for word.  This is the best my memory can do unfortunately.

This archive is garbage

"Calgary NW Landfill-4" by D'Arcy Norman, via Flickr

Today I visited the Ontario Science Centre with my sister and her two friends.  Besides the fact that Body Worlds was amazing!!!, my attention was also stolen by one of the older exhibitions.

It focused on garbage, but specifically on Toronto and its landfills.  There were a few components of this exhibition, including a selection of the materials that go into our landfill (metal, paper, fabric, plastic, food…), how much of each category makes up a landfill, but most importantly (for me) the surprising findings on the decomposition (or lack thereof) of biodegradable products in landfills.

In the past, it was assumed that any food or paper thrown into a landfill would simply decompose amidst the things that wouldn’t (at least not quickly).  That’s what I thought anyway.  Well, groups that began raising awareness around what’s in our landfills caused many to discover that this wasn’t that case.  Long story short, lack of oxygen due to everything being compacted and squished meant a longer decomposition time.

Garbage landfills are like time capsules, the exhibition informed me.  However, apart from all the stuff we expected to be there, like old license plates, pop bottles and clothing, people were also finding preserved newspapers and even mummified food!  MUMMIFIED FOOD!

[That was pretty shocking.  At least to me, who used to believe that all the food in landfills just became wonderful albeit buried compost no one could access.  Well, apparently not in all cases.]

After staring at a mummified piece of corn on the cob for a few seconds, and marveling in the fact that garbage in a Toronto landfill can lead to fascinating finds from the past, I started to think about whether or not this is an archive I could (or should) really treasure.

Sure, anything I decide to throw out now that might become an interesting keepsake in the future, I could feel better thinking that it’s being preserved for future generations in my own generation’s garbage landfill.  Hm.  Hm.
Although it’s neat to think of landfills in terms of preserving (or even saving) interesting items from the past, I’m forgetting that landfills are a problematic solution to a larger problem.  And that I’ve just…romanticized a landfill, and justified by lavishing it with magic and wonder.  I think I’m starting to really see how “obsession” and “archive” are related.

Letterheads…a trip to the past…and into reflection.

From Letterheady.com

I’ve subscribed myself to the Urban Outfitter’s newsletter…yes, I have completely succumbed to this store.  I just love all their products that are complete throwbacks to other decade’s products.  Or like 2008’s Christmas gift to my Mum which was a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

And of course I can’t just click one link in their newsletter…I end up clicking a lot which ends up being a web window shopping experience on their website.  Today I started perusing their blog which includes posts from other UU stores across the country.  One particular post caught my eye.  It featured an archive of letterheads from various well-known companies or individuals and the design of some of the letterheads were so wonderful to see.  The quality of the design, the texture of the paper, the beautiful illustrations…and since the letterheads are accompanied with dates, it was neat to compare one decade to another.

I started thinking about how happy I was that such an archive (albeit a small one) existed, showcasing something as simple and seemingly unimportant as letterheads.  But I think that’s where the power of the archive comes through…its ability to transform something into a representation or reflection of a time.  Perhaps we thrown our own meanings on archives that may make interpreting objects a more difficult process, taking into account our own biases.  However, I think that’s also one of the great things about archives, that different meanings can also be extracted from one object and become significant.  These are some of the things that cross my mind when going over pieces of my family archive, whether it be a historic farm, a photo album, someone’s retellings, or a piece of furniture.

Family archives, like other types of archives, while, perhaps, holding an overall kind of significance as recorded history and the fact that it can exist for future generations, ultimately hold a kind of personalized significance once meaning is thrust upon it.  While that seems really obvious and simple, it justifies each family archive’s existence in conjuction with everyone else’s.  While another family history might not be important for me, it can be assumed that it does for someone else.

And so for the letterhead archive, although not a family archive, the same kind of rules apply.  And then things get really overwhelming for me and this makes me think about the other side of things…is there anything that could not be saved, ultimately?  Why are some things inherently “more important” than others?  Doesn’t everything have a significance then and should be saved?  While there’s no simple answer, it helps me begin to define my own family archive and what it means in the wake of the  loss of such a longstanding representation of my family’s history–the farm.

It’s the most busiest time of the year…

And so my posts have been few and far between.  Thus, to update, here are a few photos from holidays at home.  Season’s Greetings!

Cook's Nips

Closing of The Carlton

I love films and hey, I’m trying to make a living at making them, so it was especially sad to see The Carlton movie theatre close down this week.  It’s always sad to see old establishments in Toronto close down, but especially movie theatres.  These places hold special meaning for me; the excitement of seeing of film, the feeling it leaves with you afterwards, discussion around it, the ability to escape for an hour or so to another place, time…a theatre is the home for all of this and more.

I didn’t even really get to say my proper goodbyes, but it’s okay because I have a lot of great memories from my many visits there.  A special thanks must go out to the awesome staff, a few of them friends and former classmates of mine, who hosted the weekly Monday Midnight Movie Madness nights that I especially loved.  Seeing Back to the Future in a movie theatre was pretty awesome, and hilarious since  screenings were normally accompanied by non-stop jokes from the audience members.

With The Carleton’s closing this week, it has been nice to see the surrounding community reflect on this event.  Special mention of one staff member and friend Doug Benn, who’s Facebook page for the past little while has been riddled with photos and videos reflecting on his time at the theatre.

The Carlton Dies, photo by Doug Benn

While the above photo is a little shocking, it’s a reminder of what we’ve lost.  It also creates an urgency to keep alive the things that smaller venues like The Carlton represent, such as support for independent filmmakers.  Without that support, we stand to lose much more than a space.  We will lose important components that make up Toronto’s artistic and cultural tapestry.

Two more shows until the holidays!

The Documentary Show, 10am, spiritlive.net

The Documentary Show’s online archive has been updated to include every show up to Dec 1st!   Go here to listen and download!

Only two more shows left!  Tune in at 10am on Dec 8th and Dec 15th for the last shows of the semester.  Hopefully we’ll be back after the holidays!   www.spiritlive.net

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/thedocshow

The Vertical Farm Project makes a good point…

Pyramind Farm by Eric Ellingsen and Dickson Despommier

“We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on earth.”

I must admit, the idea of vertical farming reminds me of the sci-fi lore of the mid 20th century that imagined what the world might look like in the late 20th to early 21st century (see example above).

Vertical farming seems like a logical idea though, especially in Southern Ontario with its suburban and urban expansions.  I was just reading an introduction for the 1869 Ontario County Index (which lists Sylvester Mackey, my great-great grandfather) that mentions how great the land is in Ontario for farming.

“Ontario is justly regarded as one of the first Agricultural counties in the Province.  Of its area–estimated at 360,000 acres—there are upwards of 210,000 acres cleared and under cultivation, about 150,000 acres being under crop and the remainder are devoted to pasture.  The soil is rich and fertile, and very productive.” (pg. 2, 1869 Ontario Country Index)

Sky Farm for Toronto by Gordon Graff

I can assume the current amount of land in Ontario dedicated to agriculture falls short in comparison to the amount in 1869.  And so, with prime farm land being developed for non-agricultural uses, where else are we supposed to go if we want to create and maintain local farming and thus local food sources?

Sky Farm for Toronto by Gordon Graff

If vertical farming works, then even giant urban centres like the City of Toronto would be able to establish larger-scale local food sources.  The only way Toronto can grow is up, and perhaps this might be the reality for other areas in the GTA in the future.  I’m so interested to see what else develops from Sky Farm and for the concept of vertical farming altogether.

Other really cool links:

• The Vertical Farm Project and designs (all above images are from this website).

• Torontoist vertical farming article

• Gordon Graff’s Skyfarm for Toronto design – Inhabitant (Design that Will Save the World) website

Archives and the physiological

Today, Wikileaks released (or are about to release) 500,000 intercepted pager messages from 5 hours before the events of September 11th to 24 hours after .  Right away, on the site’s homepage for this index, I feel like I’m about to step into an archive and respond in the same matter physiologically.  My heart beats a bit faster before I open the page that contains the first messages sent after the first tower was hit.

On monday we did presentations about our thesis project summaries.  Fellow classmate  Kate Tarini’s work features archive spaces, but she also discussed the body’s physiological experience of an archive.  The wealth of information around you, the giant spaces…it’s almost sublime, and I know that I find myself having different kinds of reactions to these spaces and the information within.  I become a bit flustered, anxious, perhaps sometimes excited, imagining what’s possible in store for me.

And like an archive where different items will have more meaning than others, so is this pager messages index.  The long page of text filled with mundane messages from spouses, office workers, virus hosts is slowly replaced by responses to 9/11.

Media reports are noting that most of the messages are confusion about what was happening.  I saw one that reported it was a bomb detonation. Already the index is being analyzed for information it can give us about the reactions of people to the event.

I found this index to be a great example of the kind of physiological responses an archive can produce.

More info: thestar.com’s article – the story, and more links

The wild breaking the city’s border

 

urban vs. rural spaces”]Making a film that touches on food production, sustainability, the “green” trend, changing landscapes, suburban expansion, and the disappearance of the family farm, I’ve been looking around a lot at juxtapositions of urban vs. rural spaces.

An event in toronto that happened, detailed in a thestar.com article today, was a great example of this juxtaposition.  A wild deer (assumed wild) was found in downtown Toronto, before sedated and taken away.  An idea of a wild animal roaming the streets of Toronto is a strange image to have in my head, and the same must have been for the people that experienced it first-hand in the city’s core.

 

Authorities aren’t sure where the deer came from specifically but regardless it managed to permeate the city borders and for a few moments the urban and rural came together.  Now, there are zoos and petting farms within the city, but those animals are contained.  The wild deer is like a foreign object–it doesn’t belong in the city, and as soon as it got it, great effort was taken to remove it.

I think it speaks greatly to how easily urban spaces permeate the rural borders and take it over without much opposition (or if there is, ultimately housing and serving the growing population is the priority and wins out), while the reverse requires much more effort.  Well, one day perhaps the wild will take over again.