INDUSTRIAL PARK LIVE DINING by Nicole Fournier

2009





INDUSTRIAL PARK LIVE DINING is the research, development and creation of applying LIVE DINING in an industrial park, in the Burroughs of Saint-Laurent, Montreal, QC. Industrial Live Dining is an expansion of the Live Dining concept, which includes ecosystem development, and the creation of multiple Live Dining spaces within a polyculture context of wild and cultivated plants, co-designing the Live Dining landscape with employees, creative participation of employees in an expansion upon the Live Dining concept.

LIVE DINING is a planting, harvesting, preparing, composting, cooking, dining PERFORMANCE, a CONCEPT, with "Live Dining-Room Kitchen" installation, CHANGING, ADAPTING & EVOLVING with different contexts. Bringing and/or VALIDATING "wild" plants, polyculture agriculture, foraging in needed places, to address issues related to food, medicine, culture, non-monetary exchange, in contexts of diversity of people, plants, wilderness, domestication & community. http://livedining.blogspot.com/

LIVE DINING is about planting wild and cultivated plants, and setting up chairs and tables for people to commune within the plant environment. LIVE DINING is meant to engage people to connect to plant life in an individual and or collective way, as well, LIVE DINING is about greening an area of land with diversity of plants (essential for biodiversity related to preventive human and environmental health issues), and provides a place that welcomes people to sit and be amongt this biodiversity, as a way to bring people in direct contact with plant life and other people. The importance of plant biodiversity includes non-edible plants to the edible plant system, for ecosystem maintenance, for greening spaces, for human global food security, all of this environmental knowledge, informs and underlie the Live Dining concept.

LIVE DINING is a collective and relational performance, which includes digging, sowing, planting, harvesting, preparing, cooking, dining. While not all LIVE DINING creations have included collective planting or cooking, the cooking part has been made into a schedualed 2-3 hour dining event, as a way to celebrate the creation of this green space for people, plant biodiversity and ecosystem development.

LIVE DINING is a concept that is site specific & adaptable to different contexts. It involves promoting diversity with polyculture agriculture of indegeous wild plants and cultivated plants, to address interconnections between the sources of our food, daily acts of food preparation, non-monetary exchange, the importance of biodiversity to the planet and food security, people & plants, domestication, environment, wildness & community.

Each person’s presence is part of the verbal and non-verbal exchanges. The public is invited to participate, whether they perform one action, all actions, or none. The result has been with past LIVE DINING, a connecting between the people involved in a LIVE DINING performance, which results in a sense of temporary community, and has led to more permanent communities.

INDUSTRIAL PARK LIVE DINING, will involve restauration - the seeding and planting of indigenous wild plants, but also the conservation of existing wild plants that have been found on the site, this includes a small woods "boisée" that homes mammals such as fox, rabbit, squirrels and voles. Therefore the setting of LIVE DINING will be PERMANENT, more than a season, with the plan for ecosystem development over several years or hopefully decades. To date the settings of past LIVE DINING have been seasonnal and impermanent.

A CO-CREATIVE PROJECT BETWEEN NICOLE FOURNIER and EMPLOYEES OF THE COMPANY

INDUSTRIAL PARK PROJECT, LIVE DINING will be a co-created with and for the employees of the company-landowners. This project is seen by the Canadian Wildlife Federation as a possible prototype for other companies in the industrial park to follow.

Former contexts or settings for LIVE DINING have always been impermanent: A Parking lot (Visualeyez2007 performance festival, Edmonton, Alberta), a vacant lot, a constructed elevated urban agriculture space (articule, Montreal), an existing community or collective garden, suburban backyards a cement courtyard (Sardinia, Italy), a roof top, and a field.


Ideas in LIVE DINING concept
In environmental thought, there is this of idea of interconnectedness in the philosophy of Deep Ecology, but there is no creative or artistic re-imagining of solutions or approaches to bring the public to experiencing this interconnectedness in human environment. It seems you have to go into the wild, but when you do, you destroy the wild. Wilderness is to be preserved and people kept out of it. Civilization is about control, controlling, managing, designing every aspect of human made environments, including plant and tree growth, and measuring, and monitoring scientifically with our inventions in technology, all aspects of human-environment relationships. There is no wildness left (hardly) in the city. This controlling behavior has caused a great diminishment in global biodiversity, of all species, which more and more has been linked to disease (new super viruses) and global warming. This, in the plant world, can be a metaphor for human relations in the social, economic and political arena, in connection to how we control and create norms in public space. My performance work research has involved and continues to involve, being aware of the context of the performance and either creating spaces for contexts or bringing or validating contexts of the mix of wildness and controlled growth of plants, to talk about the balance between wild and controlled behavior

Idea of “planting” wildness.
This means leaving lots of room for planting indigenous plants, or leaving “free space” room for them to take seed. I want to put more emphasis on leaving uncontrolled space for Wild Plants, because greening of cities is normally about using cultivated and planned controlled design of planting.

PERMANENT DIVERSE PLANTS for the INDUSTRIAL PARK project is also about creating a long term self-perpetuating edible and non-edible context, to encourage a long term natural ecosystem development. Long term development, happens with wild plants and cultivated plants that come back every year (perennials).This allow for health and an increase in biodiversity as the plants interconnect and mutually support each other, and invite insects, birds & other wild plants to live in an industrial park.

Summer heat waves and the industrial park context
The INDUSTRIAL PARK site is one of the most needed places for wilderness and biodiversity.
What is today the Saint-Laurent industrial park, in the mid 1970’s, was farmland and small forests. I went to a conference on February 19th, 2008, organized by the Conseil regional en environnement de Montreal CREML, about strategies for greening cities, which included discussion of the urban heat island effect created by cities all over the world, that contribute to global warming. The Industrial parks of Montreal are one of the major sources of increase in temperature in cities connected to global warming. Industrial parks are the one of the heat islands in cities.

More picts from May 15th, August and October 2009

Over 40 fruit tree were planted and another dozen or more were relocated from the wild field in the background. The validation (conservation) of the small forest, wild field and existant ecosystem, plus an integration of space for people, with addition of more plants, replacing grass areas.

Along the fence where you see the distribution center, with 18 wheeler trucks, there had formerly been simply grass.This area was replaced with about 24 fruit tree, vines, a path, furniture made by the employees of recycled materials, and spaces where wild plants were either relocated, like tansy, goldenrod, sumac, or where wild plant seeded themselves, like wild carrot (queen annes lace), amaranth, evening primrose, and others. So instead of grass, there was an amazing restoration of diversity of wild food, medicinals and fruit trees, integrated with live dining furniture made by employees.


October 2009, goldenrod plant, relocalized by employees on May 15th. In background, sand was brought in to make a volleyball court, in a area where there was a need for drainage and where there was not much diversity of plants and too much thistle plant invasion.



In foreground, tomatoes and basil were planted and tansy and evening primrose was relocated (end of season). In the middle of the picture to the right is coltsfoot that was validated, it was growing there before. Although coltsfoot is hardy and invasive, other grasses and burdock keep take their place, so it stays in a nice patch near the trees. The two chairs further in the picture were donated ready made from employees, so was the little chair on the left side.


Here is a close up of two chair that were recycled and where the employes created collages of pictures of their company litterature on the chairs. The two chair and table to the right is again donated ready mades.


Invasion of growth October 2009, with a live dining chair, with beans growing on the chair (find the beans in the picture!). In the background you see the volleyball court.




more furniture donated in foreground, with gazibo made with 2 swings and 6 grape vines planted at the 6 bases holding up the gazibo.

cherry tree in foreground. Over 40 fruit tree were planted and another dozen or more were relocated from the wild field in the background


In foreground to your left, furniture, tables and benches, completely made by employees, from recycled materials, part of the diversity and place to commune, that replaced an area along the fence that had grass only. In this area, as mentionned, there were over 24 fruit trees plant of different varieties, right up to the cabane for tool at the end (which was also made by the employees).




Along the fence where you see the distribution center, with 18 wheeler trucks, there had formerly been simply grass.This area was replaced with about 24 fruit tree, vines, a path, furniture made by the employees of recycled materials, and spaces where wild plants were either relocated, like tansy, goldenrod, sumac, or where wild plant seeded themselves, like wild carrot (queen annes lace), amaranth, evening primrose, and others. So instead of grass, there was an amazing restoration of diversity of wild food, medicinals and fruit trees, integrated with live dining furniture made by employees.








may 15th

INDUSTRIAL PARK LIVE DINING 2009 - update - picts from May 15th, 2009 and November 2008

May 15th 2009 - landscaping, construction, installation of "dining" areas, planting, by employees and Nicole Fournier

Industrial Park Live Dining evolved into the realization of "Heritage Park" (named by the employees) - the adaptation of the Live Dining concept by 40 employees of a company in an Industrial Park. Table and chairs were created by employees using recycled materials, and as well as ready made furniture was used for the project.






November 2008 - Guy Quinn (urban wildlife specialist) and Rob Baker (mammal specialist - Tracker) and Nicole Fournier (the one taking pictures), on the Industrial Park Live Dining site, observing mammal wildlife next to the company. Rob Baker finds evidence of vole (field mice) on site, in the wild area of the site. The vole are main food supply for the fox that Rob Baker began tracking in the winter (video of this in the making....)

The observation of wildlife mammal activity is part of the Industrial Park LIve Dining Project of verifying that there was wildlife in the industrial park, as part of the ecosystem within which the polyculture space was being designed and created, by employees and Nicole Fournier. The site of Heritage Park (Industrial Park LIve Dining) includes wild space, a small forest and the co-created, designed space by the employees based on the Live Dining concept.