Contre-monument à 100 millions de brins d’herbes identiques

(Counter-monument to 100 million identical blades of grass)

Project for a public intervention (unrealized)
and installation

Axenéo7 (Gatineau)

2015

True, the weed produces no lilies, no battleships, no Sermons on the Mount… Eventually the weed gets the upper hand. Eventually things fall back into a state of China

— Henry Miller

This public intervention project was inspired by the forgotten history of Victory Gardens, the tens of thousands of gardens that were planted by citizens in response to an initiative by the governments of Canada, the United States, Britain, and others during World War I and World War II as a way to mitigate food shortages. Contre-monument proposed the collecting of seeds from alternative agriculture groups and organizations that practice knowledge sharing, the preservation of shared heritage, and collective action. These seeds would then be planted during a group performance in the perfectly manicured lawn surrounding the Memorial to the Victims of Communism, a large-scale architectural project supported by the Conservative Government. This became an opportunity to create a vegetation-based, plural, and untamed counter-monument that would redefine what “communism” might mean today.

The construction of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism was abandoned after the defeat of the Conservative government in the federal election in 2015.

Presented at Axenéo7 (Gatineau) during the exhibition Monument aux victimes de la liberté, curated by the Entrepreneur du commun collective.

About the exhibition and Entrepreneurs du commun (in French):
Rétrospective et réactualisation de l’exposition Monuments aux victimes de la liberté ↘
by Josée Desforges, revue Spirale.
Le contre-monument qui viendra hanter Harper ↘
by Marie-Ève Charron, Le Devoir.
Tous contre le monument ↘
by Jérôme Delgado, Le Devoir.

_{Contre-monument à 100 millions de brins d’herbes identiques

Digital prints, wild plants and found containers}