In 1969 environmental activists from the University of Toronto staged a mock funeral for the don River to bring attention to its polluted state. The cast of the satirical procession ranged from Elizabeth Simcoe—romanticizing the early colonial river valley—to an industrial capitalist— pied for comic relief. As the narrative resurfaces every few years, the event has been used metaphorically to speak of the river’s “rebirth” from its modernist maltreatment and the stakes of its revitalization. Yet you dream in the green of your time, is a series of foraged gestures drawing from a critical visitation of the procession and the confluent settler imaginaries of Nature. Together these gestures stage an ecology in-between, a post-industrial river valley negotiating the city’s production of Nature, its dreams of green.

Works in exhibition: yet you dream in the green of your time (video, 6min with custom bench made from salvaged furniture); A map towards undercurrents (debossed watercolour paper, foraged dyes, buckthorn berry wall painting); Victoria sandwich (salvaged furniture and folded image of the River/DVP); time capsule; artist’s choice (vinyl print).

(photo documentation courtesy of Toni Hafkenscheid)