Scrapbook

At the end of last school year I was part of an exhibition titled You Are Here; its theme was showing possibilities that exist in the dilapidated state of downtown St. Catharines. It seems that artists have always been the first to spark the cultural change needed for wealthy developers to give blocks of cities a cosmopolitan makeover. Look at New York, for instance, and the now rich neighborhoods of Soho and Chelsea which had started from raggy studios and housing for poor artists. In Berlin this is still happening even though the wall has been down for a little over fifteen years; artists are buying cheap there and turning blocks into cultured art scenes according to Canadian Art Magazine (a few issues back).

In Utopia: Towards a Better Toronto, Alana Wilcox has put together articles regarding this state of change in her city. The writing is uplifting and reminiscent of the city that has just begun making international clout with its music scene, film festival, and newly revamped architecture. It has been giving me the sense of euphoria when looking where I live – St. Catharines. There is a world of possibility here that exists because it is not yet swarming with artists and then developers which would hike up the price to live or do anything. Thank God that I can still walk downtown and grab breakfast for less three bucks.

Back to this exhibition though… A fellow artist and I fabricated a scrapbook that held faux newspaper articles dating back from World War Two. We also came up with a fictional person, Katarzyna Sorokowski, who had been saving the articles creating an invented history for St. Catharines, one that is both glorious and tragic. The articles lead the viewer through the story of this city’s rise to success and fame all the way to its state today. The story was utopic – and perhaps how we would have liked St. Catharines to be - but to someone who lives here, the articles jab at the way the city is as it stands.

To further validate our lie, we placed Scrapbook in the Centennial Public Library in its appropriate section with fake library codes so that it might stay there for a while.
Unfortunately on a recent visit, the book was missing and on investigation found out that one of the library staff now owns it. According to one of the head librarians that I had talked to, there was a weeklong debate over the books validity. This excites me because we must have done a good job with the coffee stains and watercolour ink pen to make the book look as old as it said it was. Perhaps in their research for the truth, they got thinking about St. Catharines more critically and saw the possibilities for it. I can only hope.

Scrapbook, 2006