LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE EXAMINES THE MINING INDUSTRY AT VENICE BIENNALE

Jun 29, 2016 by

extraction-exhibit
A visitor to Extraction watches a video displayed in the ground / copyright Laurian Ghinitoiu, via Arch Daily

One of the first ever national architecture pavilions to be curated by a landscape architect debuted last month at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The Canadian exhibit, entitled Extraction, is curated by landscape architect Pierre Bélanger, ASLA, who is also associate professor at Harvard University. Ryerson University ecologist and landscape planner Nina-Marie Lister, Hon. ASLA, also worked on the project, along with architecture firm Rvtr, design firm Opsys, and the multimedia firm Studio Blackwell.

Extraction examines Canada’s role in extracting the resources that fuel our cities. “Canada has become a global resource empire. The preeminent extraction nation on the planet,” Bélanger said, citing its 20,000 mining projects now underway.

Visitors to the exhibit are invited to look through a hole in the ground, where they see a solid-gold survey stake planted at the intersection of the English, French, and Canadian pavilions. Beyond the stake, a video plays, displaying the history of Canada’s resource extraction through 800 images from 800 contributors in 800 seconds.

Bélanger and his team were initially warned that visitors to the exhibit would begrudge prostrating themselves to view the film, so “we milled a beautiful ½-inch surface of Corian that we keep clean and made a pillow for people to kneel on as a way to engage the project. Many people started laying down on the ground and relaxing.”

A visitor to Extraction watches a video displayed in the ground / copyright Laurian Ghinitoiu, via Arch Daily
A visitor to Extraction watches a video displayed in the ground / copyright Laurian Ghinitoiu, via Arch Daily

Architect Bruce Kuwabara told Bélanger that Extraction “engages us in questions of responsibility and ethics in the face of an overwhelming challenge — to reset the relationships of power so we might create a more transparent and equitable world.”

Bélanger explained that most Biennale visitors suffer from “interior exhibition fatigue,” and that the fresh air and natural light were in part responsible for the large crowds Extraction has drawn. Furthermore, “we specifically under-designed the project and augmented the texture and interaction in order to engage the senses in ways that appeal to a much larger audience than drawings, models, or writings on the wall.”

He add that “exhibitions at the Biennale are expected to be about the celebration of national architecture, located inside of a national building belonging to a specific nation. Our involvement as landscape architects, ecologists, planners, and urbanists makes it unique.”

Indeed, the Venice Biennale is a valuable opportunity to share landscape architecture as well. “The basic element of land — in all its political, ecological, social, and technological dimensions — is often overlooked. We need to make land relevant to pressing questions and critical matters of urbanism and a very large audience of professionals and the public.”

Extraction will be on display in Venice through November 27 and then proceed onto a Canadian tour through 2017. A book of essays concerning Extraction is also in the works, co-edited by Bélanger and Lister. Learn more online or by following the project on twitter @1partperbillion.

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