Concordia Journal Home > Archives > January 14, 2010 issue >

International scholars dig Gardens and Art conference 

By Anna Sarkissian

For études françaises professors Marc André Brouillette and Geneviève Sicotte, a garden is more than meets the eye. It’s a theme that connects people.

“Everyone has some kind of personal link to a garden,” Brouillette said. “It could be as simple as growing a plant on your balcony.”

Present in art, history, architecture, and literature, it’s also an object that lends itself easily to a multidisciplinary approach, Sicotte added.

On Dec. 10 and 11, the duo hosted an international conference in the MB Building called Gardens and Art: Framing, Unframing, Reframing with speakers from as far away as Poland, France and California.

They raised topics such as philosophy, sociology and the creative process.

Presented with support from Concordia’s branch of Figura, the Centre de recherche sur le texte et l’imaginaire, the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, and the Faculty of Arts and Science, the two-day event helped establish a network to unite scholars in this broad field. The conference was free and open to the public.

“We live in a society in which university research is not always well-received,” Sicotte said. “It’s important for us to have an accessible event.”

Topics ranged from overgrown gardens and their representation to the nature of installation gardens, which Nicole Valois from Université de Montréal looked at in a session on Friday morning.

She explored different concepts of nature: first (hills and forests), second (cultivated lands) and third (gardens). Valois showed a picture of pylons cutting across green mountains.

“This is like a scar on the landscape,” she said. “It makes us reflect on the use of resources and the impact on the land. Here, we’ve transformed what would be primary nature into secondary.”

In Brouillette’s presentation, he examined artist Michel Goulet’s outdoor sculptures, which incorporate chairs and fragments of text in public spaces.

Near the Gare du Palais in Quebec City, Goulet arranged 40 chairs on a pathway, facing different directions. Each chair is inscribed with poetry. The project, called Rêver le nouveau monde (dreaming of a new world), helps to assign a contemplative function to the space.

“It becomes a game that helps to show and to hide. You read the text. You sit on it. The chairs help us experience outdoor spaces in a new way,” he said. “And it’s thanks to a sculptor.”