This proposal extends the 'Means of Production' intervention into the Windsor Ontario's downtown core. The objective is to (in a small way) re-purpose the scrap from the area's declining auto industry and combine it with wood grown from plantations of carbon absorbing trees to make shovels with which to plant even more trees with which to reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by a major transportation corridor.
Means of Production is a series of neighbourhood scale botanical interventions
into damaged urban landscapes, which provide urban greening, raw
materials and relational social spaces in marginalized areas.
The Windsor piece, tentatively called "Means of Production- Rust Belt Version," will consist of an urban ecoforestry plantation of hickory and black locust, near the foot of the Ambassador Bridge.These would be pruned and grown to provide a crop of tool handles. The
trees will be managed using a technique called 'coppicing' which
allows them to regrow from their stumps and to be harvested again, ad
infinitum, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.
The black locust fixes nitrogen from the air, making it available to
the hickory, forming what is known as a 'guild' . Locusts also have the
ability to clean soil be absorbing toxic metals etc. and sequestering
them in the wood.
After the handles are harvested and milled using simple non-electric
pole lathes, (made from a sawhorse and a sapling and a piece of
string), we will forge shovels, rakes, hoes etc. from scrap automobile
parts, using simple 'guerrilla' blacksmithing techniques., i.e
re-purposing the industrial archeology of the area.
(One of the forge designs is based on a modified backyard barbecue.)
Combined with the handles, the resultant forged tools would then be
used to dig the holes to plant more trees.
"Means of Production- Eastern Iteration" is conceived to re-frame the
industrial heritage of the Auto Age as a 'mine' of opportunity on which
to build new green initiatives. It acknowledges the rich and complex
history of the North American auto industry and draws from it the
resources necessary to heal the damage it has caused. It also creates
the opportunity for local people, many of whom have been displaced from
the assembly lines, to 'reforge' their relationship to nature and to
"re-skill," thereby regaining some control over their means of
production.
