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Victory Gardens 2007+: making art as if the environment matters

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Victory Gardens 2007+: making art as if the environment matters

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VICTORY GARDENS 2007+:
MAKING ART AS IF THE ENVIRONMENT MATTERS

by
Sarah Nesbit

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC, ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES

May 2009

Copyright 2009 Sarah Nesbit
 
ii 
Dedication

To my beautiful Bethanie Rose, with you it all makes sense.
 
iii 
Acknowledgments

This paper could not have been written without the help of numerous faculty
members, my family and my friends. I would like to thank everyone who helped me
through this lengthy process. I especially would like to extend my gratitude to my thesis
committee, Carol Stakenas, Rhea Anastas, Joshua Decter and Ruth Weisberg, for their
perseverance, direction and advice in writing this thesis. I want to thank Ligeia Gorre for
being our guide through the past year. To all my editors who spent countless hours
reading and helping me make this document what it is, thank you! I would like to thank
my colleagues, especially Lauren Davis, Liz Lidgett, Rebecca Johnson and Lauren
Walser. Thank you girls for embarking on this often-stressful process with me and
allowing me to turn to you for constant help and support. I want to give a particular
thanks to all of my family who has continuously encouraged me through my educational
and artistic career. A special thanks to my parents who took on whatever they could to
lighten my load. I want to extend a special thanks to Alex Rosales, who has been patient
and encouraging through my writing process. Alex, thank you very much for your
enduring love through the last two years, for your support, help and consistent reminders
of why I ultimately chose to do this.
 
iv 
Table of Contents

Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
Abstract v
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Introduction Endnotes 5

Chapter 2: Victory Gardens 2007+ 6
Chapter 2: Endnotes 19

Chapter 3: The Role of the Artist 21
Chapter 3: Endnotes 27

Chapter 4: The Battle of Aesthetics and Politics 29
Chapter 4: Endnotes 36

Chapter 5: Conclusion: A Call for a Change 37
Chapter 5: Conclusion Endnotes 40

Bibliography 41

 
v 
Abstract
Contemporary visual artists have been working with the land since the early 1960s. In our
current ecological crisis, it is imperative to examine what role the arts can play in
working towards environmental change. To this end, Amy Franceschini’s Victory
Gardens 2007+ will be presented as a case study of how artists are creating both
symbolic and functional projects. Then, placed within a broader context of a range of
artists’ practices, both the role of the artist and contemporary visual aesthetics will be
analyzed. In doing so, this thesis will consider how artists dealing with ecological crises
can overcome the contemporary debates surrounding aesthetics in socially engaged art.
 
1 
Chapter 1: Introduction
Since the 1960s, artists have been creating what is now considered earthworks
and land art. This moment marked a distinct shift from artists using nature as a subject
for their work to dealing directly with the earth; artists were no longer simply depicting
the environment but physically and conceptually engaging with it. Their engagement with
the land allowed the artists to conceptually use the land both in and as their sculpture.
This manifested in projects like Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, Walter De Maria’s
Lightning Field, and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.
When artists began turning their focus to creating awareness towards restoring the
environment in the 1980s, further expansion of types of engagement with the earth
occurred. Artists such as Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, and Helen Mayer and Newton
Harrison began to create work to direct attention to environmental problems in what John
Beardsley called the “greening of art”.
1
This work differed from the works of artists who
were using the earth as their raw materials. The artworks, in what can be termed as
restoration ecology or ecological activism, were interventions focused on repairing the
environment and reversing the actions that have damaged it. It is no secret that our
environment is in need of a complete ecological makeover. The crisis surrounding issues
such as global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, overflowing landfills, destruction of
wetlands, and the diminishing forests and green space continues to worsen daily.
Accordingly, art critic and theorist Malcolm Miles has called for artists to move forward,
not in a meaningless search for innovation or towards a utopia, but towards refining the
tools of social and environmental practice.
2

 
2 
Sculptural earthworks since the 1960s have been an important focus of
interrogation. This paper will focus on activist-based art practices grappling with
ecological issues. The aesthetics of along with the formal engagement with these works
will be examined to gain a better understanding of how this artistic practice has evolved.
Environmental activism exists today, in many forms, and it often falls into the categories
of socially-engaged art, political art, dialogical art and other similar practices. The work
being produced in these categories is attempting to raise both overall consciousness and
solutions of ongoing ecological problems.
Although several environmental projects will be discussed in this paper, artist
Amy Franceschini’s Victory Gardens 2007+ will provide the grounds for analysis in
exploring how artists are grappling with ecological concerns. To refer to Franceschini’s
practices as well as other projects discussed throughout this paper, I will be using the
phrase ecological-activist process-based art. Specifically, I will be drawing on the
thoughts of critic and theorist Malcolm Miles and curator and writer Nina Felshin to help
define what the terms “ecological-activist” and “process-based art” mean. Miles defines
the ecological aesthetic as art that looks deeply into our present diminishing conditions,
working conceptually to meet our social needs,
3
and Felshin looks at activist cultural
practice as having the ability to create a hybrid cultural form of artists engaging in
activist art. Felshin expanded this concept in the introduction to But is It Art?, stating that
activist art is separated from other political art not because of the issues talked about, but
through the artists’ methodologies, frameworks and activist goals.
4
Felshin contended
that activist art is a hybrid cultural practice that is shaped by both the ‘real world’ and the
art world representing a “confluence of the aesthetic, sociopolitical and technological
 
3 
impulses of the past twenty-five years or more that have attempted to challenge, explore,
or blur the boundaries and hierarchies traditionally defining the culture as represented by
those in power.”
5
Eco-activist process-based art is beginning to create more collaborative
spaces in the art world, indicative of a shift, which began in the 1960s, from being object-
based art to process-based art, and from being situated in an art-world venue to public
spaces.
Eco-activist process-based art is a diverse practice that illuminates the dire needs
in our contemporary society. Artist, designer and teacher Amy Franceschini has focused
her current artistic project on the impeding situations that are affecting our ecology. The
second chapter will be devoted to Franceschini’s project and will provide an in-depth
look from conception to execution, providing a creative description of a provocative
project as well as an exemplification of an ecological-activist process-based project. The
next chapter will also look at how the project performed both functionally and
symbolically through conception to manifestation.
The third chapter will investigate the role of the artist in eco-activist process-based
work. Examining the role of the artist from several theoretical perspectives will allow us
to truly consider the ever-expanding role of artists in process-based art and the
relinquishing of boundaries between artists and their collaborators. Eco-activist process-
based art is a creative practice that does not fit squarely into one type of production.
Through its multifaceted methods, the artist’s role has been reconfigured and transcends
historical characteristics. Although several opinions and concerns will be reviewed here,
this chapter will ultimately focus on ways that artists create opportunities for
engagement, production and resolution.
 
4 
The final chapter will bring to light further key aspects and conflicting views over
eco-activist process-based art, a practice firmly grounded in the politics around socially-
engaged art. In texts written by noted cultural theorists and art historians such as Nicolas
Bourriaud, Grant Kester, Malcolm Miles, Claire Bishop and Miwon Kwon, among
others, the vigorous concerns of aesthetic critique and preservation are considered.
Ultimately, I will utilize these arguments to hypothesize the possibility of a middle
ground framework for socially-engaged art. I will discuss how Franceschini’s Victory
Garden project can be viewed as a middle ground in ongoing aesthetic tensions, as she
does not compromise or subdue the aesthetic nature of her project through collaboratively
working towards aiding local food production.
 
5 
Chapter 1: Endnotes
 
1
John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape, (New
York: Abbeville Press. 1998) 160-161.

2
Malcolm Miles as cited by Timothy Collins, “Towards an aesthetic of diversity” in
Ecological Aesthetics: Art in Environmental Design: Theory and Practice, ed. by Heike
Strewlow, Herman Prigann and Vera David (Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser, 2004).

3
Ibid.

4
Nina Felshin, ed., But is it Art?: Spirit of Art as Activism. (Washington, Bay Press,
1995) 9.

5
Ibid.
 
6 
Chapter 2:Victory Gardens 2007+
In the 21
st
Century, victory and progress figure prominently in the United States’
national narrative. The need and desire for victorious solutions to society’s shortcomings
are exemplified by such projects as the Victory Gardens, which were initially instituted as
post-World War responses. These Victory Gardens (also known as Liberty Gardens and
War Gardens) were nationwide garden planting movements to help produce food locally,
a political initiative to offer alternatives to depleting the public food supply during the
war. Gardens were planted on all types of land, including public and private residences.
In addition to providing food throughout different American cities, the gardens
were also morale boosters. They gave United States citizens something positive to focus
on during a time riddled with war and depression. In 1943, writer Dr. Frank Thorne
wrote an article in Science News Letter discussing the horticulture of Victory Gardens
and contended, “Working your own little patch of ground is part of the home front
fighter’s front-line assignment. Chief weapons should be tomatoes.”
1
Articles such as this
were quite common, both assisting and urging citizens to get out and plant their own
gardens or join community gardens. The same year Thorne praised the gardens, more
than 20 million gardens were growing and producing eight million tons of food.
2

Ideologically, the garden holds historical significance. Valerie Smith, curator of
Down the Garden Path: The Artist’s Garden After Modernism (Queens Museum of Art,
2005), describes the garden’s ideology as contentious. Smith states that some view the
garden as neutral and pure, free of all political interests, while others acknowledge the
garden’s cultural constructs and recognize the politics around it.
3
She goes on to say that
in order to hold our attention, the garden must entertain conflict, reflecting the tension
 
7 
created by the first garden in paradise.
4
Smith’s notion of the garden’s struggle with
conflict, while still holding on to its purity and neutrality, matches the struggles that
artists have confronted when using gardens in their practice.
In 2007, San Francisco-based artist Amy Franceschini began working with the
garden in her practice, using the Victory Gardens from World War II as her point of
departure. Following her artistic practice, Franceschini’s project, titled Victory Gardens
2007+, explored the continuing conflicts between humans and nature, public space, and
technology. In her introductory essay on Franceschini’s Victory Gardens project, art
historian and critic Lucy Lippard states that today’s wars are very different from the long
ago ‘good war’, and the stakes are even higher. She continues: “Our battles are not only
against the elusive ‘terrorist’ and encroaching fascism at home, but against the apathy
with which U.S. society seems willing to witness the breakdown of planetary systems
that have guaranteed us life.”
5
Lippard questions why cities like San Francisco, New
York or Galisteo (her home village in New Mexico) can’t produce the majority of their
own fresh produce. She describes Franceschini’s current project as illuminating, inviting
us to get our hands dirty in the agricultural sense rather than the political, and to provide
models for broader campaigns.
6

In the summer of 2006, Amy Franceschini was visiting family and friends in
Ghent, Belgium, and through an interesting experience with a neighbor, she learned of
Ghent’s Bebloemingsacties: Planting Action Program. Through this program, the city
supported a list of actions such as reimbursements on seeds and soil as well as subsidies
on items like green roofs and systems that catch rainwater.
7
During that same summer,
while reading Laura Lawson’s book City Bountiful: The History of Community
 
8 
Gardening in America,
8
Franceschini learned about the Victory Gardens that took place
in World War I and II. These revelations piqued Franceschini’s interest in staging her
own efforts to recreate the Victory Gardens in San Francisco. Eventually joined by other
artists and supporters, Franceschini began working on her vision of producing gardens to
aid in local food production.
During the height of World War II’s Victory Gardens, San Francisco was a leader
in home gardening and local food production. Following the original intentions of the
post-war Victory Gardens, Amy Franceschini’s Victory Gardens 2007+ is a current,
positive step in attempting to return San Francisco back to its activist position as a
forerunner in community gardening. After her summer in Ghent and upon her return to
San Francisco, Franceschini was honored as a Society for the Encouragement of
Contemporary Art (SECA) award recipient and asked to exhibit at the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The SECA Art Award Exhibition, on view January
26, 2007, was the gateway to Franceschini’s reinvention of the Victory Gardens. In her
book on the Victory Gardens, Franceschini describes her inspiration for this project as
rising from a web of concerns: “disenchantment with American politics, climate change,
living in a country at war, bebloemingsacties, and food security.”
9
Franceschini’s
exhibition at SFMOMA allowed for a visual presentation of her conceptual perspective
on new urban agriculture while bringing forth a fresh perspective on gardening strategies
for the city of San Francisco.
10
With the exhibition, Franceschini set out to challenge
issues on food production and present an imagined utopia where the city is producing and
providing its own food. While the concept of the Victory Garden was adapted from
history, Franceschini put a new twist to the meaning of ‘victory’. In her essay on the
 
9 
project, the artist states, “In this project, ‘victory’ is: self-reliance, political action,
education, community involvement, and independence from corporate food systems.”
11
It
is through this layering of ‘victory’ that Amy Franceschini goes beyond creating a project
that is merely about what it says, and tries to facilitate a practice that is about what it
does. The success of this project was not measured monetarily or even by the number of
people who visited the exhibition, but by the subsequent actions that came out of planting
the gardens and harvesting food locally.
12

Coinciding with her receipt of the SECA award, members of the multidisciplinary
collective Future Farmers
i
joined Franceschini and sought out three homes in San
Francisco as pilot sites to plant garden beds.
13
After placing an advertisement on
Craigslist, they received over eight hundred responses overnight. Ten houses were
interviewed, and then a final three were selected. The three chosen were purposefully
selected to be growers of these prototypal gardens and to demonstrate how food can be
produced anywhere in San Francisco. Each home was selected in one of the three
microclimates of San Francisco: the Sunbelt, the Transition belt, and the Fog belt. The
houses were selected based on the candidates’ desire and commitment to be a part of the
project as well as their previous gardening skills and their economic, cultural and
geographical diversity.
14
An assortment of fruits and vegetables were planted, each set
custom tailored to the individual site’s needs. Whether strawberries, bok choy, or herbs,
each site had an amazing variety of foods planted that fit the growing conditions of the

i
 In 1995, Franceschini founded the collective Future Farmers. Future Farmers is a
multidisciplinary collective comprised of six people who are dedicated to issues of
sustainability, art, society, technology, and architecture. The group’s mission is to work
together to create new work that encourages consciousness surrounding these issues.
 
10 
particular microclimate. As with the crops, the design of each garden was tailored to each
particular site. The sites ranged from twelve square feet to over ninety square feet.
Planting site number one, the Transition zone, was home to Shaggy and Nathan Cohen.
With sixty plants on the roster, forty-five volunteers joined together to convert the
perimeter of their backyard into an organic edible garden. Similar to the Cohen family,
the Wong family in the Fog Belt transformed their backyard into a home for one hundred
and fifty plants arranged throughout the yard. The final site chosen was a community arts
center in the Sun Belt. Bayview Healing Arts Center is a multi-use facility that took on
the overgrown unused space adjacent to the Arts Center’s building. During the process of
digging up the weeds, they found that the space had at one time been landscaped with a
drip system and several previously planted plants. The space was cleaned and restored in
order to gather and grow food.
Each site’s starter gardens and materials used to construct the raised beds were
delivered on the Victory Garden Trike, a custom-designed bike by Franceschini with the
help of Paul Cesewski, able to deliver all necessary items to install one garden plot. To
commemorate the project’s launch, there was a planting party and two lessons regarding
the logistics of creating a garden, covering topics such as building the raised bed,
harvesting seeds, and installing the drip system. The purpose of these lessons was to
make sure the collective was not solely providing the means to build proper gardens, but
teaching those who were going to be harvesting gardens how to reap their foods properly
and keep the soil healthy. To finalize the planting, each pilot garden participant signed a
‘Good Gardening Oath’, promising to maintain and document their garden while saving
twenty percent of the seeds to return to the Victory Garden 2007+ Seed Bank.
15

 
11 
The three pilot gardens were planted between October 2006 and April 2007,
16
and
Franceschini’s exhibition at SFMOMA opened on January 26, 2007. Although the
Bayview Healing Arts Center garden had not yet been planted, the exhibition presented
the pilot projects as small endeavors with the potential to evolve into a larger plan for San
Francisco’s supported food system.
17
The exhibition displayed an array of objects and
images from the pilot Victory Garden projects, integrating other works ranging from
videos of the projects in action to WWII Victory Garden historical elements.
The exhibition displayed not only the documentation from the planting of these gardens,
but also sculptural elements like a Shovelpogo and a Bikebarrow used in creating the
pilot gardens, which stood as both visual icons and useful tools.
Paralleling the planting material that circulated in WWII, Franceschini designed
and exhibited objects ranging from planting party posters to seed packet flags. As seen in
Figure 3, these flags were tri-colored, seed-embedded flags representing the three
microclimates of the pilot gardens. The Garden Trike sat beneath the flags, filled with
starter kit items used to create a raised garden bed (such as a drip hoses, soil, and seed
packets). Hanging behind the Garden Trike was a purposefully-designed gardener’s
jumpsuit and a sampling of the planting posters that were displayed around town to
advertise the three pilot plantings.
As viewers circulated the exhibition, they could both walk around the objects
designed for plowing and hauling dirt and preview a selection of photographs that
compellingly documented different stages of the pilot gardens. These images allowed the
viewer to witness an unfolding of the project while providing literature beneath the
photographs in archival cases.
 
12 
The literature ranged from items of the past to present, which provided a
documentation that recounts the WWII Victory Gardens and Franceschini’s paralleling
project. WWII Victory Garden posters, seed packets, and maps of the three San Francisco
microclimates were all displayed. With these elements on display, the overall exhibition
provided a creative sampling of the multi-structural project that Franceschini had
executed. The exhibition ended with an image of the San Francisco City Hall at the time
of World War II and the gardens that took over its front lawn (Fig. 7). This image
provides viewers a glimpse at Franceschini’s next endeavor: recreating the gardens in
front of San Francisco’s City Hall.
After the closing of the exhibition and the planting of the pilot gardens,
Franceschini moved on to her next undertaking for the Victory Gardens: to plant a
sustainable garden in front of City Hall. Joined by The Garden of the Environment and
Future Farmers, Franceschini launched Victory Garden’s next pilot program aiming to
bring a sustainable network of urban gardens to San Francisco. The portion of this
program was funded by the San Francisco Department of the Environment, and with
$60,000 granted to the Garden for the Environment for one year, they distributed starter
kits, provided lessons and education (using both websites and public programs), and
planted several edible organic gardens in front of City Hall. This allowed urban gardeners
from all over San Francisco to come and demonstrate their growing techniques on a plot
of land in front of City Hall.
In order to gain approval to plant the gardens in front of City Hall, Franceschini
approached the City with the help of Matt Gonzalez, a former member of San Francisco’s
Board of Supervisors. The artist was met with overwhelming interest and support,
 
13 
especially when she presented a historical photograph of the Victory Gardens in front of
City Hall.
18
In her interview for the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Franceschini
describes the City’s support as extremely receptive stating that
The City sees this garden as an important symbol of their long-term commitment
to urban agriculture; which includes funding, access to land and integration into
public programs, schools, libraries, and parks. The city used to fund SLUG (San
Francisco League of Urban Gardeners), but since SLUG collapsed, there has
not been another program in place.
19

The City’s welcoming support showed that it backed Franceschini in her mission to
encourage San Francisco’s local food production.
To enable the planting at City Hall, Victory Gardens paired up with Slow Food
Nation, creating the project name of Slow Food Nation Victory Garden. The
groundbreaking took place on July 1, 2008 and the project continued through September.
During the run of the project, City Hall was covered with edible gardens from different
urban gardeners around the city, including Alemany Farms, Edible Schoolyard, Gardens
for the Environment, City Slickers, and Quesada Gardens.
20
Displaying a wide collection
of organic food, the gardens became a beautiful ‘living quilt’ (Fig. 8). Ten thousand
square feet of turf was torn up and given away to residents in San Francisco to plant the
City Hall gardens.
The City Hall gardens recall those that were planted there sixty years ago during
World War II. However, the new garden beds were not planted in the traditional agrarian
landscape of long rows as they were in their earlier inception. The new gardens were
designed in circular beds working towards a new handmade landscape. The circular
garden beds were formed out of recycled California rice straw from rice farmers of the
Central Valley and watered with a drip irrigation to reduce spray and water waste. All the
 
14 
plantings were items that residents could ultimately grow in their own backyards, such as
the Hopi Blue Corn in the Oakland City Slickers bed. The Slow Food Nation Victory
Garden lasted until November 2008 and then had to be removed. Today, green turf has
replaced the picturesque gardens that once covered the front of City Hall.
Though the City Hall gardens had a temporary lifespan, they were still able to
impact the city of San Francisco. Over 1,000 pounds of food were harvested and donated
to the San Francisco Food Bank,
21
and Franceschini and her fellow gardeners didn’t stop
at City Hall; their projects continued through 2008. The Victory Garden team selected
fifteen additional homes to plant gardens in unused outdoor space, and provided lessons
similar to those of the pilot sites in 2007. This time, however, the lessons were two
training courses at a Victory Garden teaching site. As with the 2007 pilot gardens, these
homes reflected San Francisco’s sociocultural diversity as well as the various city
districts and levels of gardening experience represented.
22

Today, the Victory Garden program is funded and run through the Garden for the
Environment and volunteers. The project coordinators and volunteers are still trying to
urge San Francisco to transition to local food production. The program’s success and
growth is dependent upon the desire of the citizens of San Francisco to take up this cause
and spread the idea throughout the city. Franceschini has said she would like to see forty-
one percent of those in San Francisco producing a small amount of their own food.
23
For
her, it is a single step in the long struggle of food security and food production. The
philosophy of these gardens and that of the other gardens planted through Franceschini’s
collective projects are not just about growing your own vegetables and producing your
own food, but about sustainability, chemical intake and community building through
 
15 
local food production. Franceschini is committed to inspiring a sense of self-reliance in
the residents of San Francisco by using a powerful historical event and a compelling
name to get her message across. She states, “We need to look to past models and build
upon them – adopt relevant concerns; conservation, education, land use, urban
agriculture, and nutrition etc. and apply them to our current political reality.”
24

Franceschini is not attempting to reinvent the wheel, but is utilizing a historical concept
as a precedent for building a future structure for urban gardening and local food
production.
Amy Franceschini’s Victory Gardens are a wake-up call, an invitation to aid in
the grassroots campaign for local food production. Through both the symbolic and
functional nature of Franceschini’s work, the Victory Gardens project activates spaces
and people to institute change. In contemporary art today, there is an ongoing, complex
examination of the relationship between art and its physical site. This examination seeks
to contextualize the function of such projects; however, the functionality of art is shifting.
Art theorist and curator Suzana Milevska describes this shift as moving away from
establishing relations with the object to establishing relations between subjects.
25
Eco-
activist process-based art explores both functional and symbolic solutions towards our
contemporary ecological crisis, demonstrating that these two areas should be presented
collectively or adjacently, not in opposition. It is through the engagement of searching
for solutions that artists attend to the possibilities of a positive creative change in the
crisis.
The symbolic nature of Franceschini’s project is seen in various aspects: from the
exhibition at SFMOMA to the project name itself acting as a metaphor. For example,
 
16 
Victory Gardens’ name conveys a sense of accomplishment and triumph. Franceschini’s
notion of victory is defined as “Self reliance, community involvement, independence
from a corporate food systems and getting people closer to the natural environment.”
26

From the beginning, the project was a symbolic act to show the city that there is a
possibility to create a new beginning. These gardens represent the potential defeat of a
political battle in the United States against international food production, supporting of
local farmers, and attempting to create a practical solution for a growing project.
At the same time, Amy Franceschini is producing compelling works that are also
extremely functional. Examining the functionality of contemporary artworks
demonstrates how artists are transforming their work away from art that is intrinsically
representational. This examination asks the question: If artists are engaging in a practice,
possibly working externally with communities, can they bring a physical transformation
to a space in response to economic, environmental, and social crises? Accordingly, the
function of art is becoming increasingly more socially responsible and responsive.
27

In order to discuss the functionality of art, it is crucial to discuss the politics of
site. In his text “The Functional Site; or The Transformation of Site Specificity,” James
Meyer discusses the transformation of site specificity from the literal site to the
functional site. A functional site takes place in what Meyer calls the ‘expanded site,’ and
in his essay he explores the art world within the confines of this expanded site and
discusses the difference between a literal site and a functional one. In Meyer’s
comparison of these two sites, he states that the literal site is the place where an artist’s
intervention conforms to its location and the work is determined by the physical space.
28

On the other hand, the functional site does not necessarily contain a physical location; it
 
17 
is a process or an operation that occurs between sites, in an informational site. The
functional site is informative, temporary, progressive and nomadic, and the art creates a
nomadic narrative leading the viewers through the site. Franceschini’s Victory Gardens’
collective network created a unique site, situating an experience for the laborers,
harvesters and consumers (even if in some situations they were one in the same).
Through Meyer’s discussion of a functional site, we see how the Victory Gardens frame a
process that occurs between sites.
Critic and art historian Miwon Kwon refers to the structure of the functional site
as being (inter)textual as opposed to spatial.
29
These (inter)textual artworks continue to
travel beyond site-specific practices and extend their meanings and objectives, thereby
producing multi-layered interventions and mobile critiques. Franceschini’s Victory
Gardens go beyond site-specificity; the project is situation-specific. Franceschini is
working with the current conditions of the city as a whole, and the project spreads
knowledge concerning local food production and the power of gardens throughout the
city. Franceschini’s gardens provide the information and material to understand how San
Francisco can take small steps in addressing the politics surrounding food production. In
a physical sense, the starter gardens distributed to citizens are one example of the
functionality of the Victory Gardens. The starter gardens move away from Meyer’s
concept of ‘privileging a place’ and toward an ‘action-taking’ place at a web of sites.
30

Franceschini’s practice is joined by a lineage of artists including the Harrisons,
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Tim Collins, Reiko Goto and Mel Chin, who additionally
endeavor to use their artistic practice in a way that physically transforms the
environment. The intent of these artists lies in engaging in a creative act that contains a
 
18 
functional purpose as well as maintaining the symbolic nature of their practice. Artist
Tim Collins states, “the public realm of our time demands the attention of artists,
scientists and citizens; this is our fundamental point of engagement.”
31
These artists have
become part of ongoing political, environmental and social battles. They not only operate
as dialogical interlocutors, but also as producers who seek a positive effect on our
depleted resources and environment. In the past few decades, these artists have brought
together the functional and the symbolic, having them stand alongside each other,
allowing them to function simultaneously as components in a larger process.
32

Amy Franceschini’s Victory Gardens project was a multi-layered undertaking that
produced sculptural objects as well as activated green spaces throughout San Francisco.
Additionally, the initial three pilot gardens, along with the City Hall gardens, facilitated
community gardening and participation in local food production. As with several eco-
activist process-based artists, Franceschini is exploring functional and symbolic solutions
by presenting them simultaneously, combining both object-based and relational-based
practices in the public realm. The importance of artists like Franceschini engaging in
these artistic practices and searching for solutions to our ecological issues should not be
underestimated. As Lucy Lippard stated in her essay, Franceschini’s project might be a
small “fragile step,” but it is also a vision that creates a model upon which communities
can build.
33

 
19 
Chapter 2: Endnotes
 
1
Frank Thorne, “Victory Gardens,” The Science News-Letter 43, no 12 (March 20,
1943): 186-188, http://www.jstor.org.

2
Lucy Lippard, “Gardens as Victories” Amy Franceschini Victory Gardens 2007+, (San
Francisco: Gallery Editions, 2008), 3.

3
Valerie Smith, introduction to Down the Garden Path: The Artist’s Garden After
Modernism. Edited Domenick Ammirati and Jennifer Liese (Iceland: Odi Printing, 2005).

4
Valerie Smith, “Heaven: Paradise” in Down the Garden Path: The Artist’s Garden After
Modernism. Edited Domenick Ammirati and Jennifer Liese (Iceland: Odi Printing, 2005).

5
Lucy Lippard, “Gardens as Victories”, 3.

6
Ibid., 4.

7
Amy Franceschini, “The City is Yours” in Amy Franceschini Victory Gardens 2007+,
(San Francisco: Gallery Editions, 2008).

8
Ibid.

9
Amy Franceschini, “The City is Yours”, 8.

10
Amy Franceschini, interview with Christina Ulke, “SF Victory Gardens 2007+,”
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. no 6.

11
Amy Franceschini, “Victory Gardens, 2007+ Turning unused land into food production
zones” in Amy Franceschini Victory Gardens 2007+, (San Francisco: Gallery Editions,
2008).

12
Future Farmers, http://www.futurefarmers.com.

13
Amy Franceschini, “Victory Gardens, 2007+ Turning unused land into food production
zones”

14
Ibid.

15
Ibid., 77.

16
Ibid.

17
Ibid., 14.
 
20 

18
Amy Franceschini, interview with Christina Ulke, “SF Victory Gardens 2007+,”
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. no 6.

19
Ibid.

20
Ibid.

21
Slow Food Nation. “Slow Food Nation Victory Garden,” http://slowfoodnation.org
/2008-event/the-main-event/victory-garden/.

22
Amy Franceschini, interview with Christina Ulke, “SF Victory Gardens
2007+,”Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. no 6.

23
Ibid.

24
Ibid.

25
Suzana Milevska, “Participatory Art: Paradigm Shift for Object to Subjects,”
Springerin 2/06, http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft.php?id=47&pos=0&textid
=0&lang=en.

26
Lucy Lippard, “Gardens as Victories”, 4.

27
Maurice Berger. Minimal Politics: Performativity and Minimalism in recent
American Art. (Baltimore: Fine Arts Gallery. 1997), 13-23.

28
James Meyer. “The Functional Site; or The Transformation of Site Specificity” in
Space, Site, Intervention situation installation art. Erika Suderburg ed. (London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

29
Miwon Kwon. “One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity” in Space, Site,
Intervention situation installation art. ed. Erika Suderburg (London: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000).

30
Ibid.

31
Timothy Collins. “Towards an aesthetic of diversity,” (see Chapter 1, n. 1).

32
Suzi Gablik. The Reenchantment of Art. (Great Britain, Thames and Hudson Ltd. 1991),
27.

33
Lucy Lippard, “Gardens as Victories.”
 
21 
Chapter 3: The Role of the Artist
In the previous chapter, we saw how eco-activist art can blur boundaries between
the symbolic and functional nature in projects. In this chapter, I will focus on another
important level of investigation in eco-activist art – the role of the artist. Environmental
artists Helen and Newton Harrison define every artist’s role as one that requires him or
her to “search, to discover value, to value discovery, to discover qualities of value to
bespeak those values, to be self critical again. From this process, new metaphors emerge
and old ones are tested for value.”
1
Contemporary artists operate within a discipline that
stretches beyond the past art world’s boundaries, developing interdisciplinary practices
that intersect with many fields.
In the discussion around the definition and role of community in artistic
production in the public domain, tensions circulate around what critic and art historian
Grant Kester describes as the “utopian goals of community, the means of its achievement
and the same suspicion of discursive interaction.”
2
These process-based artworks do not
depend solely on the artist, but rely heavily on the participants and the environment.
Following Kester, artists become both facilitators and producers, and participants are left
to manage and oversee the project. This administrative and productive role, typically
designated for curators and organizers, highlights a leveling of responsibility and
reliability from the audience. The audience is called to participate, to engage and,
sometimes, to manage the projects. Curator and writer Nina Felshin further contends that
artists are creatively expanding art’s boundaries and audiences, and are redefining the
role of the artist.
3
The artist enables the audience to transition from a passive viewer into
a decisive, active participant, taking part not only in the artwork itself, but sustaining the
 
22 
project and creative practices. Kester argues that the mere act of participating allows the
viewers to have a more productive and intensive engagement in future “discursive
encounters and decision-making processes.”
4
He proceeds to justify this position by
suggesting that there has been a transition within the role of artist, where typically the
artist is viewed as a type of “exemplary bourgeois subject actualizing his or her own will
through the heroic transformation of nature or the assimilation of cultural difference –
alchemically elevating the primitive, the degraded and the vernacular into great art.” This
inevitably privileges the individual artist as an autonomous figure. However, for Kester,
who encourages a dialogical aesthetic practice, true productivity will occur between the
audience (collaborators) and the artists, if an artist is open and listens with a “willingness
to accept dependence and intersubjective vulnerability.”
5

In the case of Franceschini’s Victory Gardens, the artist carries a unique role in
the project as a designer who carefully pours her artistically trained eye and hand into
objects, such as the planting posters and seed packets. With Victory Gardens,
Franceschini conceptualized and realized products that could potentially aid in improving
local food production. In addition to the striking arrangement of the exhibition
documenting Franceschini’s intention, she merged her role as an artist with that of
community organizer and activist. Through Victory Gardens, Franceschini tried to
transform the city (beginning with food production) by pressing ecological issues that she
deemed worthy of attention and encouraging community discourse.
Typically, artists hold autonomy and responsibility over their projects; however,
in process-based projects, we continually see a leveling of the autonomous artist figure
and their collaborators. Although some critics feel that this is entirely a negative result, it
 
23 
can also be viewed as a progressive collaborative step for both the artist and the
collaborators. If an artist elects to surrender his or her autonomy, it does not diminish his
or her responsibility or authorship. In the case of the Victory Gardens, Franceschini takes
responsibility and authoritative credit for conceiving the idea and conceptually bringing
together the project, thereby relinquishing a significant responsibility for the project to
the audience.
Especially in light of the constant change in our environment and the rapid
consumption of our natural resources, artists who choose to grapple with environmental
issues must expand beyond the avant-gardist role of the past and develop diverse
processes towards addressing sustainable change. Similar to artist and architect Giles
Clement’s approach, working towards repairing our ecological damages means taking a
step back. Clement’s theory, as outlined in his book Environ(ne)ment, relates to the earth
as a larger concept and problematic, a “planetary garden” questioning our response to
space and the environment.
6
He sees humans as having irreversibly altered the
environment and that everything has the ability to transform, whether it’s through choice
or necessity; it is the role of the “gardener” to facilitate this change without interfering
with it.
7
For other artists, their role towards sustainable change encompasses initiating
actions that can then be continued by the audience and community. They strive to create
solutions and produce a transformation, no longer performing as mere observers who
critique the status quo or shock the viewer into movement or action, but who instigate the
process of change that can be handed over or completed in a collaborative effort.
Artists and researchers Tim Collins and Reiko Goto are examples of artists
working to create solutions and produce change. Their project 3Rivers 2
nd
Nature
 
24 
attempts to foster “social creativity and environmental recovery rather than autonomous
primary authorship.”
8
3Rivers 2
nd
Nature was a five-year long project that focused on the
three rivers and fifty-three streams in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Collins and Goto,
along with teams of scientists and policy experts, examined the water quality and the blue
and green infrastructure of the landscape.
9
Through conducting this analysis, they were
able to identify ecological restoration opportunities, comprehend the history and premise
for cultural restoration, and conduct public discussions. Their overall practice, like many
eco-activist artists, responds to the impact our culture has on the environment. They see
the role of art as shifting from the previous avant-garde practice of ‘leading’ the viewer to
being a facilitator or enabling change. For Collins and Goto, rejection of the previous
avant-garde art allows them to develop a critical art practice with a clear transformative
objective. Whether it seems achievable or not, they aim for an artist’s role to “shift in
response to these global changes [impact of carbon-based energy, limited resources,
climate change] while staying aware of the challenges inherent to working on a large
scale.”
10
Collins and Goto both seek methods of achieving their transformative intent,
operating within an interdisciplinary context in their respective artistic practices. They
develop an expanded locality, attempting to create both social and environmental
change.
11

In 2005, Collins and Goto’s 3Rivers 2
nd
Nature project was among many eco-
activist works involved in Groundworks, a collaborative exhibition at the Regina Gouger
Miller Gallery located at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The focus of the
exhibition was to encourage artists working with environmental issues to create
“verifiable change” within the public realm. This exhibition featured several
 
25 
interdisciplinary projects that entered a serious discourse on social-ecological issues. The
involved artists attempted to develop solutions for long-term progress, creating numerous
projects that became a reminder of art’s ability to evoke hope within a society.
12

Within process-based art, an artist’s role continually changes throughout the arc
of the project. An example of this shift can be seen in Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates. His
work continuously functions around the notion of the garden as a metaphor and a
laboratory, focusing on ecology-based art and design projects including site-specific
installations and interventions that seek to provoke inter-dependent relationships that
define our community and environment.
13
Haeg has been involved in the creation of
several artistic interventions transforming front lawns into edible landscapes, protesting
against the average 1,500 miles that food travels to reach our plate for one meal.
14
Edible
Estates is a modest intervention advocating for local food production and bringing the
garden out of the backyard and into public eye. Haeg’s Edible Estates replace the
polluted and chemically-infested front lawn with a productive organic edible landscape.
15

Haeg asserts:
The lawn devours resources while it pollutes . . . Hydrocarbons from mowers
react with nitrogen oxides in the presence of sunlight to produce ozone. To
eradicate invading plants the lawn is drugged with pesticides and herbicides,
which are then washed into our water supply with sprinklers and hoses, dumping
our increasingly rare fresh drinking resource down the gutter. Meanwhile at the
grocery store we confront our food. Engineered fruits and vegetables wrapped in
plastic . . . cultivated not for taste but appearance, uniformity, and ease of
transport, then sprayed with chemicals to inhibit the diseases and pests that thrive
in an unbalanced ecosystem.
16

Through his attempt to use gardens as vehicles to engage in larger issues, his role as an
artist travels from the production of the project (selecting the site, interviewing and
educating those who will be tending to the site and planting the garden) to the
 
26 
relinquishing of the project to its new home and leaving it in the homeowner’s hands. He
is not only creating edible gardens, but also the opportunity to create relationships
between neighbors and the environment.
This transition is typical for many process-based works, enabling the change and
creating the situation wherein the viewers can take over the project. Marjetica Potrc,
Ljubljana-based artist and architect whose interdisciplinary work typically centers on
sustainable solutions for communities, comments, “[the] idea is to initiate some kind of
change, that facilitates the nature to take over and continue the process.”
17
Potrc’s work
attends to ecological issues around energy and water problems. Stemming from an
architectural background, her work encourages change through participatory design and
the development of physical solutions. One recent project, A Farm in Murcia: Rainwater
Harvesting, worked towards helping the region of Murcia recovers its current loss in soil
and water. Potrc’s project transformed the rooftops of small organic farms near Bullas,
Spain into rainwater collectors. The rainwater now drains into a biological purification
tank and is used to irrigate the fields.
18
Potrc has completed numerous projects with
similar a structure and outcome and has also exhibited her ideas and designs in many
exhibitions around the world.
The artists mentioned thus far, like Potrc, are using processes that employ
multiple frameworks to carry out their practices. By working under the umbrella of an
institution (like SFMOMA) or independently, these artists are presenting solutions to a
broader public and connecting to the ecological crises at hand. They are creating the
opportunity for engagement, production and resolution; facilitating a dialogue that will
last long after they have moved on to their next project.
 
27 
Chapter 3: Endnotes
 
1
Susan Spaid. Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies. (Cincinnati: The
Contemporary Arts Center, Ecoartspace, and Greenmuseum.org, 2002) 3.

2
Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) 158.

3
Nina Felshin ed., But is it Art?: Spirit of Art as Activism, 13 (see Chapter 1, n. 4).
 
4
 Grant Kester, “Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially Engaged Art”
Theory and Contemporary Art Since 1985, ed. by Simon Leung and Zoya Kocur. (New
Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), 81.

5
Ibid.

6
Gilles Clement, Environ(ne)ment: Approaches for Tomorrow (Italy: Skira Editore,
2006).

7
Ibid.

8
Tim Collins and Reiko Goto, “Initiating Groundworks” Groundworks: Environmental
Collaboration in Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh: The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery,
2005) 15.

9
Tim Collins and Reiko Goto, “3 Rivers 2
nd
Nature,” http://3r2n.cfa.cmu.edu/.

10
Ibid.

11
Ibid.

12
Grant Kester, “Property & Identity” in Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration in
Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh: The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, 2005) 33.

13
Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates, www.edibleestates.com.

14
Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn. (New York: D.A.P./Distributed
Art Publishers, Inc.) 21.

15
Ibid. 22.

16
Ibid. 21.

 
28 

17
Marjetica Potrc, “Future Talk Now: Learning from New Orleans, the Western Balkans,
and Acre, Brazil,” (Conversation between Carlos Basualdo and Marjetica Potrc at The
New School, New York, November 01, 2007).

18
Marjetica Potrc, Marjetica Potrc, http://www.potrc.org/project2.htm.
 
29 
Chapter 4: The Battle of Aesthetics
The shift from object-based to process-based work, as well as the shift in work
being situated exclusively in art world venues to being situated in public spaces, is
occurring increasingly within artistic production. Due to this shift, eco-activist art, which
typically is situated in the broader terms of socially-engaged art, has come under criticism
concerning the work’s aesthetics. In a 2006 article in Artforum, London-based critic
Claire Bishop articulated this struggle as:
The emergence of criteria by which to judge social practices is not assisted by the
present-day standoff between the nonbelievers (aesthetes who reject this work as
marginal, misguided, and lacking artistic interest of any kind) and the believers
(activists who reject aesthetic questions as synonymous with cultural hierarchy
and the market).
1

This struggle expresses the shift from the Cartesian and Kantian tradition in aesthetics to
a deconstruction of structure creating a ‘relational’ mode of cultural production. Within
the past few decades, artists’ practices have been diverging from Kantian theory, where
design was the essence of the aesthetic, and moving toward articulating what Miwon
Kwon describes as identity politics in the public sphere.
2
In her book One Place after
Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity, she illustrates the reconfiguration of
‘the site’ through the years – initially a phenomenological or experimental site, then a
network of interrelated sites, then again enveloped into a broader “public” realm.
3

Through this transition into the public sphere, artists’ practices have moved into being
more process-based, collaborative and socially engaging with the aesthetics centered on
the process, dialogue and experience. Over the past few years, this shift has continued to
raise concerns about whether or not the aesthetic nature is compromised, predictable, or
virtually non-existent.
 
30 
In One Place after Another, Kwon is concerned with the diminishing aesthetic in
socially-engaged art. She asserts that artists are becoming “cultural-artistic service
providers rather than producers of aesthetic objects.” Of these concerns, Kwon states:
Concerned to integrate art more directly into the realm of the social, either in
order to redress (in an activist sense) urgent social problems such as the
ecological crisis, homelessness, AIDS, homophobia, racism, and sexism, or
generally in order to relativize art as one among many forms of cultural work,
current manifestations of site specificity tend to treat aesthetic and art-historical
concerns as secondary issues.
4

Kwon’s concerns suggest that the focus has been turned to artistic production, and
although Kwon is sensitive to the artist’s goals, she questions the examination of the
work’s aesthetic. For Kwon, the reconfiguration of ‘the site’ needs to be further
investigated and critiqued to locate the true aesthetic in these practices.
In “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” critic Claire Bishop
poses critical questions relative to the politics of aesthetics in process-based and socially-
engaged practices. She expresses her concerns through questioning their criteria and
judgment. She states:
The urgency of this political task has led to a situation in which such collaborative
practices are automatically perceived to be equally important in artistic gestures
of resistance: There can be no failed, unsuccessful, unresolved, or boring works of
collaborative art because all are equally essential to the task of strengthening the
social bond.
5

For Bishop, the criteria for these projects falters in that it primarily regards ethics in the
discussion of the work’s “conceptual significance,” thus entailing a lack of commitment
to the aesthetic. She states that the “social turn in contemporary art has prompted an
ethical turn in art criticism.”
6
The projects are increasingly being judged for their process
and ethical values instead of the product. She further contends that artists are presently
 
31 
not creating a distinction between their work inside and outside the gallery, situating their
work within social collaboration as a mere extension of their conceptual practice.
7
The
efficacy of the aesthetic is at stake, as the experience and ethical judgment takes
precedence in the aesthetic critique.
Bishop cites the Turkish artist collective Oda Projesi as an example of a project
that falls under the aesthetic criticism presented above. The group’s practice is based out
of three apartment rooms in Istanbul, providing a platform for the community to engage
in workshops, performances, and dialogical exchanges. The dynamic spaces are
important to the community, but in Bishop’s essay “The Social Turn: Collaboration and
its Discontents,” she questions the aesthetic nature of the project, stating that the project
“revolved around predictable formulas” and therefore holds the art to a higher standard of
investigation and discussion.
8

Though critical of the aesthetics being produced within socially engaged art,
Bishop questions if there is a middle ground where the two sides could meet.
9
Her
objective is not to merely dismiss these projects as art practices all together, but to seek a
more critical aesthetic. Art historian and critic Grant Kester sees this practice from a
different perspective. From the ‘standoff’ struggle mentioned above, Kester is what
Bishop would consider a ‘believer.’ In his discourse, Kester uses the term ‘dialogical’ in
describing socially engaged practices. Kester’s conception of dialogical-based art practice
is derived from “the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhin, who argued that the work
of art can be viewed as a kind of conversation; a locus of differing meanings,
interpretations, and points of view.”
10
In his writings on dialogical art, Kester describes
how practices are based on a unity of “provocative assumptions about the relationship
 
32 
between art and the broader social and political world and about the kinds of knowledge
that aesthetic experience is capable of producing.”
11
In turning to the contentions of the
aesthetic, he then argues that all the projects are carried out in different manners and their
aesthetic nature is ‘reframed’ once dialogue enters the conversation of the aesthetic. The
aesthetic becomes the experience, and it is no longer manifested through a formal
condition of the object, but rather in the development of possibilities and discussion. It is
embedded in a collaborative and consultative process of exchange and dialogue.
12
The
aesthetic transcends the product and shows up in the process, dialogue, and outcome.
Nicolas Bourriaud is another theorist whose work attempts to comment on the
tension surrounding the shift of art from product to process. In his discussion of relational
aesthetics, Bourriaud identifies utopian concepts that inform contemporary cultural
production and challenges the role of artworks, saying their role is no longer to “form
imaginary and utopian realities but to actually be ways of living and models of action
within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artists.”
13
Bourriaud notably
argues that interventional practices of Do-It-Yourself culture and recycling are no less
deserving of attention than the examination of “Messianistic utopias.”
14
This stance
rightfully validates eco-activist projects like Franceschini, Haeg, and the Harrisons
wherein the procedure, collaborative nature, and dialogical structure of the activist
process-based art creates the aesthetic. Working with an ecological perspective provides
an in-depth account of what art can do and is doing, ultimately reformulating its
meaning.
15

Artist Mel Chin’s project Fundred/Paydirt, currently taking place in New
Orleans, supports Kester and Bourriaud’s deliberations. Chin’s artistic practice
 
33 
characteristically straddles the line of environmental remediation and scientific
examination. Fundred/Paydirt is a New Orleans-based project that attempts to protect the
citizens of New Orleans from toxic lead that saturates their soil. Ultimately, Chin hopes
to replace the soil and reduce its toxicity.
16
The project includes children across America
designing hundred dollar bills (to potentially “fund” the removal of the soil) and Chin’s
SAFEHOUSE. This project goes beyond the object of the safe, and Chin is transforming
his idea into a reality by meeting the social and ecological needs of New Orleans.
Another project that addresses the aesthetics concerns of socially engaged art is
Amy Lipton and Sue Spaid’s exhibition Ecovention (2002). In Ecovention, Lipton and
Spaid evaluated the “artfulness” of all the projects in the exhibition, which focused on
ecological interventions, and presented a discursive layout of artists who produced
sustainable ‘ecoventions’ while working to transform local ecologies. The exhibit
included artists such as Patricia Johanson, Mel Chin, the Harrisons, Buster Simpson, and
Agnes Denes. In constructing the exhibition, Spaid and Lipton turned to Plato’s
Symposium, where Diotima and Socrates argue over the significance of beauty, “which
entails imagination and brings forth not beautiful images but new realities which are
presumably original or inventive.”
i17
For the exhibition, the artist’s inventiveness was
applied to art history, ecological practices in the public sphere, and the ways each artist
employed ‘novel techniques.’
18
This decisive factor allowed for the artworks to be
examined critically and comparably in an art world context. This criterion was helpful in
developing a critique of the “aesthetic significance” of these artworks.
The questioning of aesthetics and the level of social engagement within cultural
production will continue to surface as artists grapple with the problems we are facing in
 
34 
today’s world. In the same way that Amy Franceschini confronts issues surrounding local
food production, artists around the world are working with other highly charged issues.
Both sides of the aesthetic argument have validity, and critics are legitimately calling for
a higher aesthetic and the recognition of broader platforms. It is crucial to acknowledge
projects that are using different platforms, rather than traditional aesthetic modes, to
address social issues. However, it is equally important to measure these projects against
an established barometer of criticality relative to contemporary art practices that does not
let them sidestep criticism because of their positive ethical values and achievements.
Is this ‘middle ground’ that Claire Bishop calls for attainable? Amy
Franceschini’s Victory Gardens 2007+ is a touchstone for this debate. Franceschini’s
commitment to the aesthetic throughout her project is apparent at every stage – from the
exhibition at SFMOMA, to the pilot gardens, to the detailed designed posters, Garden
Trike, and organic arrangement of the gardens in front of San Francisco’s City Hall.
Additionally, her process and the outcome of the gardens is the heart of her aesthetic
practice, and without them it would be simply speculative. The process and dialogue that
accompanies the creation of the gardens makes issues in the city more complex. The
aesthetics in Franceschini’s practice extend from her products into her conceptual
process, allowing her to collaborate with the people of San Francisco and physically
show them how they can aid in local food production. The Victory Gardens should be
looked at as a model that straddles the aesthetic tension and effectively works towards
making a difference. The project produces aesthetic objects and aesthetic experiences
while striving for a utopian reality. Franceschini’s hybridized framework balances the
aesthetic debate, illustrating that the aesthetic can be revaluated in how it is being
 
35 
critiqued and considered without compromise. Artists and practitioners need to continue
to seek out models that synthesize the aesthetic tension while addressing the crises at
hand.

 
36 
Chapter 4: Endnotes
 
1
Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents” Art Forum.
February 2006, 178-183.

2
Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational
Identity (MIT Press. 2004,) 3.

3
Ibid.

4
Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity, 4.

5
Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” 180.

6
Ibid.

7
Ibid.

8
Ibid.

9
Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” 180.

10
Grant Kester, “Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially Engaged Art”
Theory and Contemporary Art Since 1985, 76-88.

11
Ibid.

12
Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) 9.

13
Ibid.

14
Ibid.

15
Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art, 8.

16
Mel Chin, Fundred/Paydirt, http://fundred.org/documents/Operative.pdf.

17
Susan Spaid, Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies, (Cincinnati: The
Contemporary Arts Center, Ecoartspace, and Greenmuseum.org, 2002).

18
Ibid.
 
37 
Chapter 5: A Call for a Change
Current responses to ecological issues are presented to us in different forms, and
the art world is not exempt from participating in and responding to these ecological
concerns. It is necessary for art to be involved in addressing these issues, because, like
every one of us, artists have a responsibility to help sustain our environment. As humans,
artists are members of society, and it is essential for art to be held accountable in the
planetary whole.
1
Ecological activism allows us to move towards refining the footprint
we are leaving behind, and Victory Gardens 2007+ provides a solid example of how new
perspectives can be realized through artistic practice. This type of art strikes a balance
between the institutional museum and its social responsibilities. The current
environmental crisis calls for eco-activist process-based art to both challenge the way we
are living and to propose large and small conceptual solutions.
In present day, Amy Franceschini is not only creating a space for her art and
practice to be enabled but is facilitating a movement for a city that will hopefully be
contagious for other cities across the world. Victory for the project extends beyond the
San Francisco boundaries:
["Victory"] is independence from a food system whose values we do not support.
“Victory” for the Victory Garden program is reducing the food miles associated with
the average American meal by growing more food locally. “Victory” is building an
alternative to the American industrial food system, which we view as injurious to
ourselves and to the planet. In this way we redefine Victory within the pressing
context of urban sustainability, while building upon the previously successful Victory
Garden model.
2

Victory Gardens 2007+ and other eco-activist process-based practices are continuing to
explore both functional and symbolic solutions towards present-day ecological crises,
endeavoring to create positive transformations. The symbolic and functional solutions are
 
38 
presented collectively in these practices, and artists are dealing with both sides, producing
an object and responding to the need for their practice to be functional. Artists like Amy
Franceschini, Mel Chin, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto are striving to see how their
practices can ultimately better current situations.
The artists mentioned in this text are working towards creating sustainable
solutions for cities, which will inevitably need to be adopted and continued by those
within the communities. The artists become producers and facilitators attending to
ecological issues while audience members perform as viewers, active participants, and
managers of projects. The collaborations between artist and audience play a significant
part of the artist’s process, providing opportunities for engagement, production, and
resolution. Through eco-activist process-based art, the artist’s role continues to evolve
and change, developing a multifaceted production where artists are able to engage in
process-based work while transforming the dimensions of the aesthetic debate. Eco-
activist art practices are attached to larger discussions around socially engaged art,
process-based art and dialogical art.
In the 1960s, art began to shift from object-based to process-based work, and
within this shift, the methods of artists’ practices were measured in the same way as the
objects being produced.
3
This being the case, numerous art critics found fault with the
critique being applied to the aesthetics of these practices. Over the past few years,
tensions have risen surrounding the aesthetic nature of socially engaged art and the
debate continues as the field continues to mold and change. Due to the continuous
changing nature of the field, Amy Franceschini is among a vanguard of artists who are
producing a new culture, rather than being reactive to a previous culture.
4
Artists are
 
39 
persistently striving to balance their vision and to be pragmatic, despite getting criticized
for not successfully accomplishing one part or the other.
Artists engaging in process-based art do not compromise the aesthetic in taking on
these important issues. However, in progressively facilitating and developing new modes
of practice, it is required that the criteria in judging the practices evolve accordingly.
There also needs to be further critical examination of projects that successfully reconcile
both sides of the aesthetic debate. For instance, projects such as Victory Gardens 2007+
maintain an aesthetic balance through product and process.
Artists are utilizing their creative practice to tend to critical issues and to
creatively work towards change. The average single meal travels 1,500 miles to get to
your table; this is one of a plethora of issues in our current ecological crisis. Artists, like
every one of us, hold a responsibility to evaluate our physical and social environmental
impact, but they approach it from a different perspective. Artist Sam Durant comments
that the artist is someone who can offer something outside the status quo to the situation.
5

Like Amy Franceschini and the Victory Gardens, artists are continually creating new
avenues to express their concerns and potential solutions. Ultimately, it is going to take a
great deal of time and effort to deal with our ecological issues; nevertheless, artists have
the ability to embark on the creative journey though their practice. As the field continues
to change, it is necessary to turn to models and artists like Franceschini who are
effectively tackling social issues while maintaining their artistic voice.
 
40 
Chapter 5: Endnote
 
1
Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art, (Great Britain, Thames and Hudson Ltd. 1991)
7.

2
Amy Franceschini interview with Christina Ulke, “SF Victory Gardens 2007+,” Journal
of Aesthetics and Protest. No 6.

3
Robert Smithson, “Earth: 1969,” Symposium at White Museum, Cornell University” in
Robert Smithson’s Collected Writings (London, England: University of California Press,
Ltd., 1996) 187.

4
Mark Dion, Lecture and presentation, February 23, 2009, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, CA.

5
Sam Durant, “Arts and Community Engagement Workshop,” lecture discussion at the
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, February 2009.
 
 
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Contemporary visual artists have been working with the land since the early 1960s. In our current ecological crisis, it is imperative to examine what role the arts can play in working towards environmental change. To this end, Amy Franceschini's Victory Gardens 2007+ will be presented as a case study of how artists are creating both symbolic and functional projects. Then, placed within a broader context of a range of artists' practices, both the role of the artist and contemporary visual aesthetics will be analyzed. In doing so, this thesis will consider how artists dealing with ecological crises can overcome the contemporary debates surrounding aesthetics in socially engaged art.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Nesbit, Sarah Beth (author)

Core Title Victory Gardens 2007+: making art as if the environment matters

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 04/12/2009

Defense Date 04/01/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Amy Franceschini,environment,Garden,land art,OAI-PMH Harvest,public art,socially engaged art,victory garden

Language English

Advisor Stakenas, Carol (committee chair), Anastas, Rhea (committee member), Decter, Joshua (committee member)

Creator Email nesbit.sarah@gmail.com,sb.nesbit@comcast.net

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2081

Unique identifier UC1279846

Identifier etd-Nesbit-2808 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-206203 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2081 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Nesbit-2808.pdf

Dmrecord 206203

Document Type Thesis

Rights Nesbit, Sarah Beth

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu