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'''The Society for the Preservation of Wild Culture''' or S.P.W.C., was a Toronto arts organization in existence from 1986-1991 that explored environmental and ecological issues from an artistic perspective, and in a “quirky and innovative” way.<ref>''Ryerson Review of Journalism'', April 1991, Megan Park, ”Call of the Wild”, p. 55.</ref> The S.P.W.C. was best known for three programs: a literary magazine, [[''The Journal of Wild Culture'']]; artist-guided walks, Landscape Readings; and avant-garde cabarets, the Café of WIld Culture.
'''The Society for the Preservation of Wild Culture''' or S.P.W.C., was a Toronto arts organization in existence from 1986-1991 that explored environmental and ecological issues from an artistic perspective, and in a “quirky and innovative” way.<ref>''Ryerson Review of Journalism'', April 1991, Megan Park, ”Call of the Wild”, p. 55.</ref> The S.P.W.C. was best known for three programs: a literary magazine, ''The Journal of Wild Culture''; artist-guided walks, Landscape Readings; and a series of avant-garde cabarets, The Café of Wild Culture.


The unique style of the organization was determined by how participating artists expressed themselves around the idea of “wild culture”. While calling for new articulations of the idea through its projects, at its height the S.P.W.C. was an organization that filled the cultural vacuum in Toronto with an eclectic kind of ‘thinking man’s’ fun and provided a forum for experimentation amongst performance artists.<ref>''Metropolis'', March 30, 1989, Donna Lypchuk, “Mock on the Wild Side”.</ref> The broader public was encouraged by the S.P.W.C. to engage with questions about nature and art, while frequently congregating in the outdoors. This audience was also attracted to the organization's ability to “soft pedal doom and gloom while partying for the planet.”<ref>''Toronto Star'', April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D1.</ref>
The unique style of the organization was determined by how participating artists expressed themselves around the idea of “wild culture”. While calling for new articulations of the idea through its projects, at its height the S.P.W.C. was an organization that filled the cultural vacuum in Toronto with an eclectic kind of ‘thinking man’s’ fun and provided a forum for experimentation amongst performance artists.<ref>''Metropolis'', March 30, 1989, Donna Lypchuk, “Mock on the Wild Side”.</ref> The broader public was encouraged by the S.P.W.C. to engage with questions about nature and art, while frequently congregating in the outdoors. This audience was also attracted to the organization's ability to “soft pedal doom and gloom while partying for the planet.”<ref>''Toronto Star'', April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D1.</ref>
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==== History ====
==== History ====
The notion of “wild culture” grew out of multi-disciplinary artist [[Whitney Smith]]’s experience (“a spiritual updraft”) foraging wild foods in the Ontario forest that he sold to local chefs. From 1982-85 a series of three performances, “Fern Policy”, explored the possibilities of artistic growth in the nature-culture ecotone. In May 1985 Smith made the first public announcement on the formation of the Society at a Toronto art event, “L’Affaire ‘Pataphysique””, that presented examples of [‘pataphysics]] by local artists parodying theory and methods of modern science. Following this Smith event began recruiting artists to help develop [[The Journal of Wild Culture]].
The notion of “wild culture” grew out of multi-disciplinary artist [[Whitney Smith]]’s experiencing "a spiritual updraft” while foraging wild foods in the Ontario forest that he sold to local chefs. From 1982-85 a series of three performances, “Fern Policy”, explored the possibilities of artistic growth in the nature-culture ecotone. In May 1985 Smith made the first public announcement on the formation of the Society at a Toronto art event, “L’Affaire ‘Pataphysique””, that presented examples of [‘pataphysics]] by local artists parodying theory and methods of modern science. Following this Smith event began recruiting artists to help develop [[The Journal of Wild Culture]].


==== Landscape Readings ====
==== Landscape Readings ====

Revision as of 16:15, 6 August 2010

The Society for the Preservation of Wild Culture or S.P.W.C., was a Toronto arts organization in existence from 1986-1991 that explored environmental and ecological issues from an artistic perspective, and in a “quirky and innovative” way.[1] The S.P.W.C. was best known for three programs: a literary magazine, The Journal of Wild Culture; artist-guided walks, Landscape Readings; and a series of avant-garde cabarets, The Café of Wild Culture.

The unique style of the organization was determined by how participating artists expressed themselves around the idea of “wild culture”. While calling for new articulations of the idea through its projects, at its height the S.P.W.C. was an organization that filled the cultural vacuum in Toronto with an eclectic kind of ‘thinking man’s’ fun and provided a forum for experimentation amongst performance artists.[2] The broader public was encouraged by the S.P.W.C. to engage with questions about nature and art, while frequently congregating in the outdoors. This audience was also attracted to the organization's ability to “soft pedal doom and gloom while partying for the planet.”[3]

On one of the Society’s “landscape readings” poet M.T. Kelly offered a view of how the organization sought to affect its audience: “There is a bridge between history and landscape. To get people to change their view of the environment, you can’t just argue in economic terms. It’s an emotional thing. People act politically when they get emotionally involved.”[4].

History

The notion of “wild culture” grew out of multi-disciplinary artist Whitney Smith’s experiencing "a spiritual updraft” while foraging wild foods in the Ontario forest that he sold to local chefs. From 1982-85 a series of three performances, “Fern Policy”, explored the possibilities of artistic growth in the nature-culture ecotone. In May 1985 Smith made the first public announcement on the formation of the Society at a Toronto art event, “L’Affaire ‘Pataphysique””, that presented examples of [‘pataphysics]] by local artists parodying theory and methods of modern science. Following this Smith event began recruiting artists to help develop The Journal of Wild Culture.

Landscape Readings

Landscape Readings were public walking tours led by artists of outdoor environments that held an intellectual or personal interest for the artist. Landscape Readings were a hybrid that combined the attraction of authors reading their own works with a bracing picnic outing in a setting which combines the context for a lecture on ecology, geology, history or biography.[5].

The readings were a project initially conceived by Smith to provide a venue for writer and poet Christopher Dewdney to share his extensive knowledge of palaeozoic geology, among other things, and his sense of humour. In July 1987 he gave the first landscape reading of Toronto’s High Park Carolinian forest[6], which was documented in the forthcoming issue of Journal of Wild Culture.[7]

Other artist guides included Gordon Rayner, Hank Hedges, M.T. Kelly, June Callwood, Larry Zolf, Joyce Weiland, and architect Donald Schmitt. The Readings were created to “give [S.P.W.C. participating] artists a new venue”,[8].

The Café of Wild Culture

The Café of Wild Culture was conceived in collaboration with bookseller and film programmer Marc Glassman, who recognized that the sense of humour that was so much a part of the 60s and 70s was missing in the 80s. [9]. The Café was performed first in Toronto at The Rivoli, and later in New York at the Village Gate and at Goddard College in Vermont. Its legitimate non-theatre style [10] played off the vaudeville and variety revue made up of several short unrelated acts (in the Café’s case, no longer than 7 minutes) that caught the wild culture spirit of thoughtful irreverence. Acts ranged from tendentious ‘pataphysical lectures, authentic scientific explanations, obtuse dance works, gentlemen’s shirt-ironing contests and wild food cooking demonstrations, in which small servings were provided for the audience, and a game called StorySlide™ where artists improvised a performed text based on a random photographic slide show.

Featured performers of the Café of Wild Culture included chefs Michael Stadtlander, Jamie Kennedy and Chris Klugman, David Sereda]], Brian Fawcett, Curtis Dreidger, Shiela Gostick, Gerry Gilbert, Derek Lamb, Gordon W. , Terrill Maguire, Robert Priest, Clifton Joseph, Paul Dutton, Louise Garfield, Judith Doyle, Peter Chin, M.T. Kelly, David McFadden, Brian Fawcett, Joost Baker, educator Dr. Hank Hedges, and Great Lakes scientist, Dr. Henry Reguier.

Other Programs

Smith met his match when he began a project called the Great Festival of the Lakes[11], which was to encourage the presentation of community arts festivals in Great Lakes cities.[12]. “I didn’t realize what I was getting myself in for,” said Smith. “I was very concerned about water quality issues at the time, and thought that the S.P.W.C. needed an activist project to sponsor. I was wrong. Organizing anything around the Great Lakes is like trying to organize Europe. I learned a lot about underestimating scale on that one, and spreading myself too thin.” The project was abandoned after a couple of years.

In 1990 the S.P.W.C. worked with an organization started by Michael Stadtlander and Jamie Kennedy, Knives and Forks, on Spring Feast,[13] which became a precursor of future events promoting local chefs and wild and organic foods.

Definitions of Wild Culture

Though there were attempts by the organization to define “wild culture”, there was never an accepted definition. Smith preferred his colleagues and audiences to find wild culture’s meaning through the titles of the projects in which it appeared, The Journal of—, and, The Society for the Preservation of—, where the social context was at play; that is, that there existed a serious-sounding and possibly genuine academic Journal published by a preserving Society with a long name, all devoted to a subject no one knew anything about.[14] Negotiating the serious and the non-serious in a way that made sense and entertained became part of the artists’ work.

Before there was Smith’s current definition of wild culture (“the articulated ecotone between nature and society”), no single explanation existed around which the S.P.W.C artists’ work was done. Some said that it was the vagueness of the idea, the inability to pin it down, that made it so attractive.[15] In the absence of concrete description, Smith offered a metaphor, which he has recently modified: On the surface of a transparent painting[16] is the human geographic reality that is part of our everyday life, and in the background are elements of nature, seen and unseen, that are very much alive but that people aren’t always aware of, whether out of convenience, ignorance, apathy, or any state of unconsciousness or self-centeredness that contributes to the disconnection from our primal history and our present psychic hold on the home terrain. Wild Culture is the two planes, foreground and background, seen together.[17]

References

  1. ^ Ryerson Review of Journalism, April 1991, Megan Park, ”Call of the Wild”, p. 55.
  2. ^ Metropolis, March 30, 1989, Donna Lypchuk, “Mock on the Wild Side”.
  3. ^ Toronto Star, April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D1.
  4. ^ Globe and Mail, Sept 7, 1988, June Callwood, ”Sunday morning landscape readings cultivate food for thought.”, p. A2.
  5. ^ Globe and Mail, Sept 7, 1988, June Callwood, ”Sunday morning landscape readings cultivate food for thought.”, p. A2.
  6. ^ NOW Magazine, July 9-15, 1987, Ted Mumford, ”Society mines wild culture,” p. ?.
  7. ^ Christopher Dewdney, photos by David Hlynsky, Fall 1987, “Evidence Revealed During Walk in Park”, The Journal of Wild Culture, Vol. I, No. 3., p. 40-43.
  8. ^ Globe and Mail, Sept 7, 1988, June Callwood, ”Sunday morning landscape readings cultivate food for thought.”, p. A2.
  9. ^ Toronto Star, February 4, 1989, Ingrid Hamilton, ”Scene and Heard”, p. 41.
  10. ^ Metropolis, March 30, 1989, Donna Lypchuk, “Mock on the Wild Side”.
  11. ^ Toronto Star, April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D2.
  12. ^ Globe and Mail, Sept 7, 1988, June Callwood, ”Sunday morning landscape readings cultivate food for thought.”, p. A2.
  13. ^ Toronto Star, April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D2.
  14. ^ Toronto Star, April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D2.
  15. ^ ”Ryerson Review of Journalism”, April 1991, Megan Park, ”Call of the Wild”, p. 55.
  16. ^ ”Ryerson Review of Journalism”, April 1991, Megan Park, ”Call of the Wild”, p. 55.
  17. ^ Toronto Star, April 20, 1990, Vit Wagner, ”Wild Culture artists party for the planet.”, p. D2.

External links

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