| THE HAT CREEK COAL PROJECT OF BC HYDRO Also see this article on Coal Mining in B.C, Below is a search engine dedicated to effects of pollution from coal mining. This project has been turned down by the Canada Council, because it was not "conceptualiszed enough". HAT CREEK / Environmental Intervention as ART I work in the field of avant-garde /experimental filmmaking and media arts. I have participated in the founding and operations of art organizations, film cooperatives and environmental groups. I have a significant body of work that documents the cultural scene in Vancouver from 1978 to 1985 and the social justice/environmental movements from 1984 - 1990. I am presently engaged in lyrical film work and exploring technical solutions and new media applications for the presentation of a synthesis of my art, film, video and social justice/environmental activism. My transition/transformation from community producer/artist to environmental activist began manifesting when, in the summer of 1981, I was asked to document the proceedings of the symposium being held at the site of BC Hydro's proposed low grade sulfurous coal burning conversion to electricity plant in the Hat Creek valley just North of Cache Creek, in British Columbia. If this project had gone ahead, it would have cast a pall over an up to this point unpolluted, natural paradise, populated by organic farmers and cattle ranchers and would have filled one of the heritage sites of small valleys settled by early pioneers, with ash, clogging a natural spring course. The symposium was held outside in the semi desert with wind sometimes coursing through the microphone, an technical situation typical of what I have experienced through many years of punk rock videography. The speakers were all experts in their field, this was the second time (the first being the Royal Commission into Uranium Mining) I had experienced environmental assessment through live witnesses, but in the context of Hat Creek, to Witness took on a broader meaning. My experience, as an artist to community producer to community activist to environmental activist transiting from one to another has made me a critical specialist as a result. The extraordinary daily experience of an self taught intellectual will create a mode of practice that will not follow traditionally accepted structures. When I analyze my work, I see that it fulfills a greater collective process, one that uses participatory social activism in an organized way as a transformative practice. The proceedings were saved, because I as an artist saw the value in what needed to be recorded. I realize that this has been a driving instinct throughout my work. My subjectivity was an open process that allowed me to construct a personal theory, that my work would increase peoples understanding of the real world and change the ideologies around natural resources. As my knowledge of environmental pollution increased, I became more aware of how I was situated to take part in this transformation. My subjective role as an artist allowed my art to become an affective apparatus for social change. The wild and untouched beauty of this singular valley designated as an ash dump, became the scene of an annual "Hat Creek Gathering", where a range of cultural and social groups came together but which included a strong luddite contingent opposed to video cameras and any technology which brought in the material world. It was ten years later, after the rules had been relaxed that I then filmed the next representation of transformative significance, the building of a sweat lodge, demonstrated by Eagle Star, a native of Alberta. The gathering has continued and remains a culturally significant occasion for a community of people who have a belief system based on the protection of the environment, every year the people of the Bonaparte attend, bringing salmon which is roasted at the central fire, elders attend, prayers are said. The valley itself is on the traditional land of the Bonaparte, situated in and around the Hat Creek Valley area. The organizers of the Hat Creek environmental protection group always informed and included the Bonaparte in any action. The first year of the Hat Creek gathering, the following year after the symposium, had representatives from tribes all over B.C.. It was a celebration, as participatory social activism created enough opposition to the development to put a stop to this looming environmental disaster. I have always had a critical feminist perspective of art history focused by the way my knowledge of that history was produced, direct experience, and it is the subject of another work which I will not describe further at this time. My critique is always directly involved in my work/art, a motivation that seeks systems of relations that have manifested similar understandings. My nature is to function as a highly individual motivator within a collaborative process. My coworkers will necessarily have an understanding of the experience of creating within the patriarchy of our cultural structure. I feel that with this work, the transformative process is taken one step further and my role, as director, has been situated through the circumstance and proclivity of a radical organic catalyst. My artistic interpretation will find the subjectivity of the participants and demonstrate the change that has/will take place as a result of the way the art production has been specified. In order for the visual material I have collected to serve as an affective apparatus of art activism, it needs footage of the present, 15 years after the last videography, the building of the sweat lodge. I intend to review and edit all existing footage to present to the Gathering. The Bonaparte will act as interlocutor to honour the process and honour the ancestors, show a community involved in sharing the information, teaching what is important and why it is being presented to the people. The Bonaparte will receive an honorarium for their participation, to go towards the establishment of an environmental reference website archive to use in the event of further threats to the valley, as well as the symposium archives, available on multiple dvds for local distribution, educating and preparing the people in advance. As energy reserves become more sought after, the threat of environmental devastation will always be present. I will then conduct interviews with these original organizers/participants and their thoughts around successful and unsuccessful environmental actions and their political /cultural lifestyles as contributive factors to environmental and social initiatives. The range of my experimental collaboration with other artists such as my work with bill bissett and Bill Roberts in my film "the wizard uv time" encompassing primitivist fantasy to art bands such as AKA who demonstrated extreme theorist principles and extensive videography of music, poetry and social justice, hopefully give me the experience to create a transformative film from this footage. This work will demonstrate how I became an activist as a result of my experience as a cultural worker. I have selected this particular subject out of the hundreds of hours of my videography for the reason that it is a signifier to the work I began in earnest 6 years later, leaving the art establishment to do something I considered more important, then to return full circle back to activism through the production of art. The completed work will cover the span of 25 years and it will show how collective action has created this work of art. Once it is completed, it can go back to the community in an accessible form to generate further social and cultural changes. |