The Art Caravan is working towards informing its subjects about the discussion in this blog.  After writing a post, I often send an email to the artist to tell them I wrote about their work.  I have been pleasantly surprised that artists like Jennifer Stilwell (June 2) and Anila Agha promptly responded to my emails.  (If you haven’t read the January 15 posting on Agha’s installation, please do so! Right now is as good a time as any…..just click here.)

Pierre Belanger, landscape architect, and head of the Canadian installation at this year’s Venice Biennale for Architecture, responded to last week’s blog posting, Can You Tell Me What’s Going On Here?  In the last paragraph I wrote:  I did enjoy the variety of ways the ideas are presented. I only wish the presentation had provided a vision for a way forward.

I was somewhat surprised, but happy to hear back from M. Belanger. Here is his response, in part:

The conversation we are looking to curate next year across Canada during our tour will hopefully address your questions about strategies moving forward. For us, it was important to first put this issue on the table, for which most Canadians (let alone Europeans) that live in big metropolitan regions are unaware of, nor really care to think much about. There is a huge part of territorial history that Canadians need to know about, and we believe that this project of mapping is a projective in itself. The lens it casts on Canada opens up many unheard voices with many ideas, old and new, about the future. We’re simply providing grounds for those voices to be heard, understood, and acted upon.

He genuinely seems interested in continuing the dialogue.  It’s a timely discussion, considering  yesterday’s beginning of the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.  This is, hopefully, the season for truth telling and reconciliation in Canadian society.