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multi-ethnic
population of Banff co-exist? What is its relationship to the industry
that provides the town's livelihood? Is it possible to create an interaction
between visitors and residents that provides insight into the local experience?
Corral at Banff, 1991: Community Transactions was designed as a
public art project that would answer these questions.
The
conceptual framework for the project was the creation of a public space
for local voices and community discourse. Three strategies were employed:
investigation, publication and transaction. After researching the history
of the town and the sentiment of the town's people, we designed a set
of questions that were used in interviews with long-time residents of
Banff. The interviews were transcribed and edited for the book, Banff-
Local lntcrpretations. A transaction was established that enabled
the town's residents and interested visitors to obtain the book free of
charge.
Because
tourism, for the most part, has become a commodified experience, we decided
to convert an aspect of the town's commercial network into the vehicle
of dissemination for the project. Our investigations showed that although
few locals frequent the trendy shops and souvenir trade that line Banff
Avenue, both visitors and residents alike end up at the town's only supermarket,
Canada Safeway, to purchase their groceries. At the height of the summer
tourist season, coupons announcing the availability of the book at the
Banff Public Library were printed on the back of the cash register tapes
at the Safeway. A changing selection of excerpts from the interviews appeared
as teasers on the tapes throughout the month of August.
Through
the mechanism of shopping, the coupons created a link between the business
and public transactions of the town, suggesting an alternative form of
interaction. In the United States the space on the back of cash register
tapes has long been occupied by advertisements. In Banff this space was
vacant and we were able to fill it with a promotional campaign that was
not based on a monetary exchange but an exchange of ideas and information,
thereby subverting the typical consumer experience into a cultural transaction,
This transaction was combined with the process and the product of the
project (the interviews with local residents and the book) to create a
genuinely public event. Drawing the material for the project from the
community structure allowed for a redefinition of the traditional artist/
audience relationship and the possibility for a different type of tourist
experience.
Does
the tourist travel in order to escape from reality or to gain insight
into how other people deal with reality? This is a question that has informed
a number of the public art projects we have done in San Diego. As artist-citizens
of a large tourist centre, our controversial public artworks (done in
collaboration with Deborah Small and David Avalos) have confronted directly
the civic and private power structures in San Diego that labour to submerge
local voices and concerns in order to sell a flawless, mythological image
of the city to the prospective visitors. In Banff we wanted to explore
the relationship that exists between the image of the town and the infrastructure
that supports it. We saw our role as that of investigators. We set out
as artist-detectives to uncover the invisible side of Banff - the local
frame of interpretation for the community.
Tourist
towns often thrive on the ability of their boosters to create landmarks
and nostalgic images of the site. Modern-day Banff is advertised in panoramic
views that make the town appear small and quaint beneath the looming grandeur
of Cascade Mountain. Visitors to the park are greeted by a carved portrait
of Bill Peyto, the legendary trapper who eventually became park warden.
The lore that ties the inception of the Canadian national park system
to the discovery of the Banff Hot Springs by two Canadian Pacific Railway
workers is part of every guided tour and is retold in illustrated displays
at the landmark site of the discovery, the Cave and Basin. The omnipresent
view of the Banff Springs Hotel, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway
in the 1880s as an attraction to rival the magnificence of the Rocky Mountains,
is a living reminder of the noble past. Banff's self-conscious historicity
is attested to by the thousands of personal photographs of alpine expeditions,
pack trips into the back country, annual Indian Day celebrations, burning
buildings, winter ice palaces and others on view in the archives of the
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies and printed weekly in the local newspaper.
The sign at the entrance of the park museum states that it is a "museum
of a museum." To the tourist, the town's real persona is frozen in the
past, and the park landscape is timeless. But where are the lives of contemporary
residents in this picture?
Our
effort to uncover Banff led us to interview thirty-nine residents of the
town. Through word-of-mouth contacts we arranged interviews with a group
of people who reflected the local diversity of lifestyles, ethnicity and
occupations. By studying the demographics of the town we learned that
the population breaks down into two major groups: the people who have
lived in Banff for at least ten years and the casual service industry
employees who live in town for less than a year. For the purpose of the
project we defined a local as someone who had lived in Banff for at least
a decade. While we only interviewed long-term residents, we believed that
seasonal and short-term workers would have valuable comments as well,
that a more extended project should include.
In
San Diego we are community participants who legitimately speak out on
local issues. In Banff, we were not only visitors but we were foreigners
as well. We relied on local residents for a voice with which to characterize
Banff. The fifteen questions we asked each interviewee were broad and
open-ended. They covered a variety of topics from people's cultural and
geographic background to their concerns about the future of Banff. Included
in the list were questions about each resident's relationship to tourism,
the changes they have witnessed in the town, the difference between the
tourist experience of Banff and their experience as residents, and their
feelings about the changing ethnic and cultural make-up of the town. We
also asked people, "Tell us your favourite joke or tall-tale about Banff."
As an extension of the interview process we borrowed participants' snapshots
to use as illustrations for the book. The half-hour to hour-and-a-half
interviews were transcribed and edited in the book, Banff: Local Interpretations.
Distributed in a paper bag printed with the Corral at Banff, 1991
logo, Local Interpretations acts as an alternative souvenir, a
momento to undermine the gloss of the superficial by illuminating the
lives and concerns of Banff residents.
Banff
is at a historical crossroads. Two years ago, in a plebiscite, the community
moved from being a ward of Parks Canada to municipal self-government.
In the interviews the opinions of how the town was, is, and will be redefined
were well-considered and diverse; the voices ranged from eager entrepreneur
to adamant conservationist, sanitation worker to mayor, from twenty-year
old to ninety-year old. They all grappled with defining Banff's new status
as a town.
The
major topic of contention is the relationship between preservation and
growth. The town, corralled by parkland, is an anomaly produced by the
environmental logic of a previous era. The boundaries of the town, fixed
by an Act of Parliament at the inception of self-governance, are now strained
by development. Banff is an example of an industrialized nation's notion
of progress played out to its limits, and so the town provides a unique
metaphor for the global scale.
How
can development and conservation co-exist? What is progress? Over the
next years it will be interesting to see whose definition will articulate
the design for Banff. Optimistically, this prospering, ecologically conscious
community of 10,000 people will provide a model for the future.
As
a showcase with millions of curious visitors, Banff is its own advertisement.
Can the expectations of the visitor be attuned to the mandate of the national
park? In what way can the town engage the tourist with the community that
does not create an imaginary Banff?
The
ultimate value of Corral at Banff, 1991: Community Transactions
resides not in the transaction or the book, but with the performance of
the project within the community. As artists we feel it is not enough
to deal with socially relevant topics, but that it is necessary to change
the relationship between the artmaking practice and the audience, inventing
ways to encourage the participation of new audiences for whom the work
is meaningful.
Elizabeth
Sisco and Louis Hock
Published
in:
Between Views and Points of View
Walter Phillips Gallery
Banff, Canada, 1991
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