TREE MUSEUM
CLOUDED
TITLE
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AN ART & RESEARCH PROJECT
STREET ROAD ARTISTS' SPACE
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TREE MUSEUM
LISTEN TO THE PANEL DISCUSSION >>>
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Clouded Title is a series of workshops, interviews and exhibitions centred around ownership – its ambiguities, histories, and areas of contestation in relation to land. Different landholding models – especially those emphasizing social and ecological relationships over private possession – are explored.
In April, 2018, at Pender Island's Community Hall, Emily Artinian and Fawn Daphne Plessner hosted a one-day Art & Research project that included two workshop events and a pop-up art exhibition featuring artworks by 10 artists. The workshops included a live (phone) interview with the Indigenous legal scholar, Robert Clifford (Tsawout First Nation), who spoke about WSÁNEĆ Law and its core principles of reciprocal responsibility to non-human beings that are necessary for sustaining healthy relationships with other beings. A panel discussion featured speakers Elder Earl Claxton Jr. (Tsawout First Nation), Mavis Underwood (Elected Band Council Member, Tsawout First Nation) and David Boyd (environmental legal scholar and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment). The panel discussed the complexities of the Douglas Treaty: North Saanich, the divergent interpretations and histories of the Treaty's making, and the widely differing notions of 'owning' land that are subtended by colonial and indigenous word views.
Clouded Title expands on Street Road’s overall project of troubling received wisdom around the activity that enabled its inception: real estate investment and speculation. Clouded Title is a broad survey, taking in views from diverse groups to build a multi-perspectival understanding of ownership. Components and participants are added over time. For a summary of participants and projects see Street Road