art,

education,

and the

culture of

resistance di rna

EDUCATION / ART I MEDIA

1M ARNLNO: WILD GARDEN IS NQT ABOUT GARDENING.

It is, rather, a wild and woolly book about the cultivation of learning, base-d on author and artist

dian marino's lifelong experiences in education, It is about the roots of teaching, the nurturing and production of knowledge, and challenges to "basic assumptions" and "common sense."

The book is also about making mistakes and learning from them. It is about opening up new spaces for resistance and disrupting the habits of oppression, about how writingand art can spark subversive thoughts and creative action. And the final chapter, 'White Flowers and a GrizzJy Bear," is a moving reflection on the lessons of dian marino's own terminal illness and her <;:ommitment to larger struggles ..

Wild Garden combines dian marino's writings and personal reflections. art and graphic images. and teaching tools to convey a dynamic approach to partidpatory learning. With over fifty pieces of art. this beautifully produced book will delight, confront, and occasionally perplex (it is a wild garden, after all) readers who question received ideas about living, learning, and growing together.

-Dian marino categorically re~ the disciplining of the disciplines. She challenges us to reject binaries, engage with paradox, and cross boundaries. Her pedagogical insights are both visionary and in the moment -

Unda Briskin, Women's Studies, York University

"This is a bmrthtaking offering of ideas and images that e~ry mucator will cherish and use. -

Budd L Hall, chair, Adult Education and Community Dtvelopment, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)

D ian marino, a visual artist, actiVISt. educator, and storyteller extraordinaire, was a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. York University, Toronto.

She died in January 1993.

r ---";;;;;;;;;; ., - - ,~-

; ISBN 1-8 9 63S7-13-X

between=thedines

Retail Price .l!. .. J...i.r...r.:r.. .. Review Copy ................. . Complimentary ;:'opy ........... .

Desk COP'l ...... .£ ...... E"am ( Or)y

wild garden

~ ~ d ian and I grew a vegetable garden once. It was in a meadow on top of a

~f .:J6 hill. We planted a small area with all sorts of things and carried the . water up the hill in buckets. Within a very short time we had all sorts of things

. sprouting uP. and just as qUickly as things sprouted the rabbits would eat .' them. We developed a wonderful solution to this problem. Since we had planted

on the land that was used by the rabbits in the first place. and since the rabbits obviously needed the food, we decided to plan t twice as much so that there would be enough for all of us.

dian and I were really pleased with our approach, and when things sprouted up again we found that the rabbits were also quite pleased-twice as pleased We ended up with no vegetables, but with a lot of time together, laughter, and a good story.

- Chuck Marino

Contents

Preface and Ackno-wledgernents ..... xiii

Introduction ........................... 1 Robert Clarke and Chris Cavanagh , with Ferne Cristall

An opening glimpse of the life, work, and influence of dian marino-of what she ca lled the "rain forest of moveable relations" that made up her personal history-considering the background and the nature of her work as educator, artist, and community activist.

L Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind: Reflections on My Experience as an Artist and Educator .............. 19

Dian considers her own formation as an artist and educator working for social change and challenges her audience to reflect on the patterns of their own social construction. With a little help from Antonio Gramsci and the idea of "cracks in consent," combined with a purposefully misquoted Bertolt Brecht and Nicaraguan poetry, she explores the intimate connections between critical thinking, creativity, and art. From a paper delivered in July 1989 to an Adult Education and Art Conference, Oxford University.

2.Thoughts on T eac h i ng and Learning ... ........ . .. . . . .... . .. 4 3

Emphasizing a femin ist perspective, dian argues that teachers must be open to challenging themselves if they intend to challenge their students. She considers the teaching value of making mistakes, the importance of uncovering hidden connections that serve those in power. and the inspi rat ion of collective and partici patory dreaming. Based on excerpts from an interview by Annemarie Gallaugher, 1987.

3.Willovvdal e Worldvievv : From old Mold to a Winter Poem ... . ... .. . . . . 5 7

A visual exploration of everyday domestic life iust outside of Toronto, loosely mixed with dian's refl ections on art, teaching, and living in this world. Dian produced these silk-screens of such things as old mould , a bird on a co lander. a stove top, flowers with an ashtray, and a window frame in the late 1 960s and early 1970s: a femi nist honouring of the ordinary, an artist playing with space and the spaces in between.

Drawin g f r o m Actio n for A ction: Drawing and DiscuSSion as a Popular Resear c h Tool .. . . . .......... . . ... .. .. . ... ... . ... 61

Dian offers provocative and practical exercises on how to assess and use drawing as a tool for crit ical reflection and action. Starting from a theoretical framework influenced by Brazi lian educator Paulo Freire, she considers the role and function of participatory research and critiques individually based research. The discussion ranges from exploring a McDonald's restaurant "participatory" advertiSing campaign to looking for ways of demystifying the production of art. Originally published as "Working Paper No.6" by the Participatory Research Group, Toronto, 1981.

9 . Obstac les to Speaking Out .. . 89

~ .... .. .... "';. ...

When dian presented this paper she was in the process of taking a closer look at participatory research workshops that had resulted in the production of alternative educational materials. The work had led her into media study and an analysis of the all-pervasive corporate control of adverti sing, which brought her back to McDonald's and the company's myst ique of participation. Originally presented to the International Investigative Forum of Participatory Research, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, April 12-22, 1980.

6. Re :fram.ing: H e gem.ony an d Adul t Education Pract i ces . ... ... .. .... . .. 10 3

As a follow-up to "Obstacles to Speaking Out. " dian begins by asking, "How do we know if we' re engaged in producing truly emancipatory materials, or if we' re only reproducing colonized patterns?" Adult educators (herself included) are often in a precarious position: working to avoid messiness and flatten conflict in order to

workable results. Her focus becomes "re:framing" as she rejects the metaphor of the discovery of knowledge in favour of the construction of knowledge, with students and teachers working together Originally presented to the Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults, fifteenth annual conference, University of Leeds, England, 1984.

7. Reveal i ng Assum.ptions: Teachin g Participatory Res e a rc hers .. . ... . ... .... 119

Dian discusses her fi rmly held belief that participatory researchers must learn to become mutual teachers/learners and leaders/partic­ipants. She describes her own discomfort with the idea of herself, as teacher, lurking behind a bush and jumping out when someone "gets it right" and with the paradox of offering a cou rse on "resistance" and then being expected to work at managing, controlling, that same resistance in the classroom Based on an interview done by Joanne Nonnekes, Toronto, 1990.

colour insert fol/owing p.12S

Drealn Horse , MooSe Balls, and An arth Blanket

A selection of dian's silk-screen, watercolour, and paper collage art that spans over three decades, with intermingling quotations from the text.

~ ~ " '. ~ ~ .. , ".' ... ,.~" .:

8. White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear: Living with Cancer ................ . . 14S

Dian wrote this article not long after she had learned that her breast cancer had spread to her bones. She describes the sense of loss of control and the disempowering effects of trying to reflect on and then write about the disease, given the prevailing social attitudes-and militaristic metaphors-and the varied responses she received from those around her. Naming the pain was key; only after dian was able to name her pain could her almost irrepressible humour return Originally published in Tlie New Internationalist , August 1989.

Notes .. .............................. .... ......... ISS

The Contr i utor s ....... ...... . ...... ..... 160

Introduction Robert Clarke and Chris Cavanagh,

w ith Ferne Crist a ll

D ian marino loved a wild garden. In the spring of 1992, a few months before she went into the hospital for the last time. dian

told us a story about her backyard and her dog, Bear. You have to know that in the last few years dian's postage-stamp-size backyard on Clinton Street in downtown Toronto had become her healing centre, her meeting place, a workplace, and a place of meditation. Her small wooden deck just off the back of the house was covered with century-old grapevines and plants, but sti ll had plenty of room for Sitting and re laxing in the shade. The small area beyond the deck was cluttered (purposefully) with

whirring and tinkling mobiles and gizmos. There was a wild garden off to one side-leaving just enough space for dian to stand and chat with a neighbour-and a stone path with grass on either side leading to a back-lane garage.

Dian's cancer had taken a turn for the worse in the spring of 1992, and she told us about a problem she was having with Bear. She felt too weak to take the dog for regular walks, and Bear had started digging holes in the backyard lawn and garden. spraying up soil everywhere. as a dog left on his own is wont to do-especially in stressful times. The yard

was getting to be a mess, and dian didn 't have the energy to fill the holes and patch up the grass. But she found an elegant, easy solution : she bought a bunch of new plants and plopped them down into the dog

holes. As usual. dian told this story with a laughing voice: laughing at

her dog, at herself, and at the world in general-a world that she knew didn't particularly care for the idea of animals digging holes in "cultured" backyards. In many ways the story is typical. It is about finding a way of coping, of seeing problems as creating new possibilities It shows a

~ . \,

2

woman finding creat ivity in the ordinary and delight in breaking rules­in this case rules about gardens. about animal behaviour. and about how people should "normally" respond to both health and dog problems It shows dian's ability to stand outside of herself and laugh at herself-a special gift. indeed.

Like wind-borne polien. dian marino drifted across natural and

constructed boundaries. She was-and is-hard to pin down. categorize. encapsulate. She was not on ly daughter. wife. mother. and fr iend. but also arti st. storyteller. and "internat ionally known" educator (as the press reports put it)--criticai educator. popular educator. adult educator She was university professor, popular culture worker, socia list, feminist, environ­

mentalist. community activist. academic theorist ... Stop! The "ist's" are taking over here as identifiers. And. really. it all seems much too serious. Because dian was also a humorist. even during the time when she had become "a woman living with cancer."

In fall 1992 in her Sunnybrook Hospital room. when some

friends came to visit and lined up neatly at the foot of her bed. dian got a burst of delight from their appearance "What beautiful colours! Did you guys co-ordinate your clothes for this visit? Did you organize this?" she asked. Then came the educator in her: "You've got to take care of the small things. because the big things are really all fucked up."

In her many roles and in her art. lectures. conversations, and storytelling dian operated within what she called a "rain forest of

moveable relations." And as there is more in a rain forest than can be humanly known, so too there is more to dian. She would critique capitalist relations of production but spend Saturday mornings on mad shopping sprees in a suburban lkea emporium. She would write sharply about the culture and corporate piracy of McDonald's but was always going into the cha in 's outlets and coming out with the latest Special Offer plastic toy of the week. which she'd then give away to a friend's kid.

You got the feeling she went to McDonald's not to study it or even to eat burgers-though she would half-guiltily admit to enjoying the odd Big

Mac-but to get the toys. She also said they could be relied on for their clean bathrooms.

In her life and work dian was the sort of person that Italian Marxist and activist Antonio Gramsci-one of her favourite theorists-

Wild Garden

referred to as an "organic in tellectual." British theorist Terry Eagleton has

described a type of "organic intellectual " who, like dian , goes against the

grain of society "Such a figure is less a contemplative thinker, in the old

idealist style of the intell igentsia, than an organizer, constructor,

'permanent persuader', who actively participates in social life and helps

bring to t heoretical art iculation those positive political cu rrents already

contained within it. '" This organic inte llectual is on the front-lines of the

struggle against whatever makes up the prevailing "hegemony" (another

Gramscian term that, as we shall see, was a key concept for dian ) In her

case she would work at trying to make vis ible, in unique and wonderful

ways, what she called the "hidden cracks in our consent " to oppression

and at forging the often difficult but so necessary "transition from

consent to resistance."

Dian marino's formation as an artist and educator owed much to the

activism of the 1960s She was born Dian Coblentz in 1941 and raised in

Milwaukee. Later on she recalled

I grew up with the notion of myself as an artist. and I also felt I

had strong social obligations. 1 worked my art, to the degree that

I could, into my socia l realities. Yet as 1 became more involved

with participator! research and became more explicit about

looking at poli tics and economic realities as part of the cultural

context , I th ink I began to understand what I was doing

intuitively and to recognize that it was a resistance, a very

important kind of resistance.

A part of my personal family background has been

working class , but it was a mixed family, because educationally

my mother went to university and my father didn't-so it both

was and wasn't a working-class family 1 th ink there was a lot of

experiential and lived family history that had me feeling like 1

wasn't like everyone else, and left me feeling a little bit ill at

ease-which may seem funny when people see the way 1 dress. It

seems hard for them to believe that I rea lly want to be accepted.

or be part of the norm. But 1 do--l think it's about coherence. I

want to have a sense of rootedness, of history, of knowing where

I'm going. 2

Introduction 3

4

For most of her life dian worked simultaneously as a teacher and a student. In the early 1960s she took art , art history, and English courses, and discovered radical politics, at Immaculate Heart College in California. One of her teachers there was Corita Kent , an artist with her

own inspiring, gifted wildness. Kent became one of dian's major artistic and educational influences! During dian's time at the college she met Chuck Marino, and they married in 1964 (eventually having two

daughters, Sara and Jenny). Over the next thirty years dian taught in institutions at almost

every level. from primary school through high school to university

postgraduate studies. But she also taught outside institutions Her students included factory workers in Finland; Villagers in France; slum

dwellers and scavengers in fndonesia; Native Americans and university professors in the United States; community workers in Venezuela; adult

educators in Chile and Thailand; and corporate execut ives, civil servants, union leaders, underground immigrant workers , and homeless women in

Canada. The list could go on and on. After a stint teaching at an experimental school in inner-city Los

Angeles (1964-65) she and Chuck spent a few years teaching and learn ing

in Edinburgh, Scotland, where dian taught at the very real school that Muriel Spark's fictitious Miss Jean Brodie had served so well in her

prime. In Edinburgh Chuck got notice that he was being drafted into the U.S army-which meant. of course, the distinct possibility of fighting in

the escalating Vietnam War. They refused the invitation and moved to Canada. Chuck got a teaching job at a relatively new institution, York University (founded in 1959 as a small affiliate of the University of

Toronto, it got its independence in 1965). Dian also began working at York, first as a tutor in 197 1, then as a teaching assistant. part-time

lecturer. and later as course director in the Department of Psychology at York's Atkinson College

She also worked on postgraduate degrees in environmental studies at York University (1974) adult education at the University of Toronto's O.I.S.E. (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1977, 1984)

"My Ph.D. committee warned me that one of my problems was I wanted to learn:' she said in an interview' She also wanted to transform the

nature of learning. She once altered the environment of Envi ronmental Studies by creating giant "tubes" made of clear plastic sheets with all

sorts of stuff-artwork, messages, declarations, celebrations, critiques, greetings-stuck onto the inside of them and hanging down all over.

Wild Garden

Students, professors, and staff had to walk through the tube-lined halls

to get to offices and classrooms. By 1984 she had become a professor in York University's Faculty

of Environmenta l Studies-though it was never easy for her working in

the belly of the beast, as she said: "I think most of the education that

happens in universities is domesticating and maintains current political

relations It's not really aimed at changing very much. That's not my goal

In fact I would like to change things quite deeply and dramatically'"

At the very same ti me, and perhaps most essentially, she had

become deeply involved, outside the university setting, in the adult

education movement (including literacy and participatory research),

international solidarity, anti-psychiatry/mental health organizing, and

environmental education. She was a founder. with Budd Hall and Ted

Jackson, of the Participatory Research Group IPRG), an organization

linked to the International Council on Adult Education and springing

from a critique of the dominant research methods of the day The PRG

supported activist research by

women garment workers , Native

band councils , immigrant youth

groups, and trade union health and

safety committees. As a result. for

instance, in 1978-80 dian was

teach ing English to new immigrant

workers in Toronto workplaces in a

collaboration between labour unions

and plant management. boards of

education and community organi­

zations . The classes were held in

factory cafeterias.

She also, always, did her

art-provocative, colourful work, a

rich and playful blend of socially

committed and personal expression

The art-sometimes produced collec-

tively and sometimes on her own One flower holding it all together -challenges traditional relationships between people, nature, and

media. "To create means to relate ," her teacher Corita Kent wrote . "The

root meaning of the word art is to fit together and we all do this every day.

Not all of us are pa inters but we are all artist s. Each time we fit th ings

Introduction

6

;

together we are creating-whether it is to make a loaf of bread. a child. a day."" As a teacher and an artist dian always seemed to find ways of breaking down established ways of seeing things in order to find

divergent angles. to open up new spaces for resistance-translated into art. for instance. as "the spaces between."

The articles in th is book were written. or spoken (two of them are based on interviews, and a couple more delivered at conferences), in a span of

intense activity between 1980 and 1990. They are both autobiographical and about autobiography. They are about teaching in university and community settings, about methodology and technique. They are about

using art for education and action, taking risks and problem-solving, shifting "frames," and recognizing and reorganizing the structures

that govern our everyday lives. They are about rethinking, or

re:framing, everyday life and the roles of working and teaching; about integrating creativity, intuition, and

ideology in art, learning, and action. In some ways the art icles reflect changes in the

educational thought of the time; in how to do poli tica l education. They reveal a process of changing methodology in the practice of critical or political

education. In doing this they reflect changes within the wider radical education movement: the shift in the

1970s away from teachers and activists (consciously or unconsciously) th inking they had the answers to how the

world works. and that they had only to work at finding the best

way of leading students or participants towards those answers; and moving towards an integrated stance of seeing learning-and resistance-as a jointly negotiated process on the part of teacher and

learner. Dian marino saw feminist and postmodern thought as friendly aids to her critique of the tidier facilitation methods she had bought into

with a certain amount of discomfort. This particular pedagogy involved messiness and disruption- "disruptively connected," dian called it-but

could ultimately lead to more fruitful learning, and possibly to new directions for both teacher and student. Still, she also loved to give a

good lecture, one of the most traditional pedagogical techniques. although the lectures were distinctly conversational in tone.

Wild Garden

Problem-solving in imaginative or creative ways is a constant

theme of this work But the problem-solving did not happen in isolation

from a social setting. It was not something t hat was mystical or "new

age" or that relied solely on logical analysis Much of it focused on

metaphor and "The language of t ran sformation and imaginati on is

extremely important to me," she says "As art ist I feel I've com mitted

a lot of my life to working to have people imagine and express

alternative visions. As we're going through a process of decolonizing,

we're also expressing transformative visions, alternatives, trying to make

our worlds and our contexts healthier, better p laces to be"

The changes in dian's visual art run hand-in-hand with her

practice of education and activism. Some pieces (like "Songs of struggle

and celebration·') were collective productions; some were done for

politica l projects, meet ings, events . Some were si mply the work of a

political ly engaged artist sifting through the complexities and contra­

dictions (and the funny side) of life. Although she drew, illustrated, and

painted extensively, dian worked primarily in silk-screening (serigraphy)'

a print-maki ng process using a fine-mesh silk-screen through which

paint is forced onto paper (see "Landscape for an Easily Influenced

Mind") Screen-printi ng, one of t he newest of the graphic arts-dating

back only to the beginning of the century-caught on particularly with

artists and activists from the 1960s on They rea lized it was an

inexpensive and way of making multicolour prints on paper and

cloth, and it requ ired a minimum of equ ipment and machinery. (Today

you can find beginners' si lk-screening kits in the children's sections of

stationary and art supply stores.)

Dian used silk-screening to deal with issues of politics, power,

gender, the environment. or simply to exalt, disparage, celebrate, or

complain about the structures of "everyday life"-Iooking for the

aesthetic in the everyday the "everyday spectacles." While some popular

art was playing with pieces of daily life, such as soup cans (in a

decidedly framework), dian was the place of stove

tops and TVs-the "Willowdale worldview"-and wondering how these

things fit into her own life, the lives of women, and the relationships of

power and oppression Whether dian was working with community

organizations or on a personal piece, she often proved to be a scavenger,

"collect ing and connecting seemingly unrelated material, events, ideas,

and occurrences""

IntroduCtion 7

~~1

The production and critical reflection included a focus on the very act of producing art, the nature of individual and collective creation.

Dian would name individual prints from one production differently, and she would number prints misleadingly. Instead of numbering a set of prints consecutively from one to ten, for example, she might give five or

six of them the number one. While she made a choice to stay rooted in activism and education rather than enter the mainstream art world , she was clearly part of an emerging practice of twentieth~century art-a practice that challenges the construction of the artist as lone producer and instead locates art inside a constellation of relationships and interests and discussions: re:framing what we see as art. She was interested in demystifying the production processes of art and in using drawing, painting, silk~screening . collaging. photography. and role play as ways of communicating. ways of learning.

Her art pervaded her life. In the hospital a few days before she died. with all three members of her immediate family sitting on the bed .

dian asked if they could see the bird perched on her knee. She quickly noticed the puzzled response. deduced that she was hallucinating. and

then, with a smile, suggested, '·Sara. get a pen and I'll tell you how to

draw it" The result was a bird much like the one portrayed in her "Bird on the edge about to ... "

}( Bird on the edge about to ... (1975)

8 Wild Garden

The art (like the teaching) was often wild and flamboyant , but then too

so was dian marino. One day you might see her wearing a ring of silver

hearts on her head. Another day it wou ld be neon pink plastic stars . Dian

wrote her name self-consciously in lower-case letters , not just out of a

sense of arti stic playfulness but more seriously to foreground questions

of authority and power In 1960 a teacher who hadn't quite got her intent

noted at the end of an essay, "Your principle of capitalization seems

obscure"

In her work and everyday life she was a champion of resistance,

especially resistance to received notions of "artist" and "educator " She

was consistently concerned wi th relations of power, of all types, and the

resulting need not just for resistance to power but al so for strategies of

empowerment , of all types; although later on she began to have doubts

about the much-used word "empower. " In "Revealing Assumptions, " she

says , "You can't empower people ... I think that is a real consumer use of

the word empower"

As a teacher dian was engrossed in the crit ical examination of

the theories and practice of learning. In her classes she discussed crit ical

education, creat ivity, storytelling, and the theories of Gramsci. As a

critical educator she combined a number of different methods: lectures,

small group discussions, drama, popular education techniques, and

visual expression, among others. Her storytelli ng strategy worked to form

meaning out of experience. She resisted the academic understanding of

kn owledge as totally scientific, exact, exacti ng, handed down. For her

students and others the challenge would always be there to rethink

assumptions and reflect on the notion that each of us is a knowledge

produ ce r; each of us has an important personal voice. "A lot of what

critical education is about is taking ourselves seriously as producers of

knowledge," she told students '"

No discussion of dian's work can ignore it s theoretical

grounding. She embraced theoretical discourse and loved to develop her

understanding of complex ideas; to communicate those ideas in ways

ta ilored to her audience and the moment; and, perhaps most

importantly, to stimulate and encourage their modificat ion, adaptation,

and application to current circumstances. Three theoretical notions were

particularly important to her conjunctural meaning, hegemony, and

re:framing.

Introduction 9

10

people in passing' what's heard and no heard

Wal ing down Bloor 5 ree lhis summer, not far from where I live-I wear th se hea -shaped sun glasses, and you can tell when people

hit your ey The rest of my clothes ar quite au rage-ous, but people can avoid that. can control themsel , either looking down or off in another direction.

But wha I found with my heart-shaped glasses IS that the people will work heir way up, and wh n they gel to th glasses

they'll laugh, or they'll smite. or they'll giggle, or th y'll want to know

wh re I got hem. I 's all just too funny 0 be- taken seriously. I hink part a wha happens with people and my clothes sometimes is they

get nervous about me. Maybe it's important. You know, that it's a

s dous kind of hing, and When they get to he heart-shaped glasses they move to ana her level. Somehow or other, h y can't restrain themselv •.. they smil

I deHghts mohave encounters wi h people I don't know, will never know again, and to have that passing mom n of contact

that is memorable, I rememb r the faces of tho~ people (fS hey go by, as they smile. And I'm sure they remember the momen 00.

One time I was walking along Bloor Street with my husband Chuck and the kids, just east of Brunswick Avenue. They were ahead

of me and had just crossed the stree to go 0 our car, which was

parked a Ii Ie way down a sid 51r et. I was wal ing along, and this guy was about fifteen ee away from me. He spreads ou his arms and yells out, "YOU LOO FANTASTIC!" He was very heatric:al about

it, and I miled bad<, Then he cam ov rome and said. in a voice that only I could hear-"butabitostenta IOI.lS.~

H turned around and walked away ... and I'm glowtng with laugh ert because everyo e nearby hard the very loud Irst part, no th second. Then, fi een eet behind me now, he said, as loudly as he

could, And make sure you wear the sam thlO9 tomorrow!"

Wild Garden

I th,ink for me humour and playfulness have to be so many layers. There is an element of th absurd, or paradoxical or contradictory, tha just makes my playfulness come to the forefront. Uke one time

in an art class an artist was holding forth on abstract painting. He said something abou an ~abstract priest," and I fell off my chair laughing. I couldn 't contain myself. This very serious talk had gone too far. "Abstract priest' was 5uch a contradiction, and at the same time it was accurate. I mean, priests are real people. They aren' abstract, and they also act right out of it. At one fell swoop this artist had described about six aspects of a reality.

As an inveterate storyteller dian was always giving out accounts

of herself as situated in specific "conjunctures ," relating stories and

times in which she had made decisions that changed her as an artist and

educator. She reflected on the ci rcumstances that shaped her. With

distinct p leasure and pride in her mother'S idiosyncratic ingen uity, she

would t race her own creativi ty back to her mother'S unique use of

conventional household items.

To see meanings as "con junctural" is to suggest that what are

normally descri bed as "objective tru ths" are better understood as events

or moments in which we are looking at or experiencing a unique comi ng

together of particular forces, of relations and their history, and of space­

ti me frames- and that all of these elements can vary accord ing to how

we ad just our lens9 We may want to examine a conjuncture wi thin the

frame of a decade, a year, or a day; or with in a nation, a city, a

neighbourhood, a family, or a backyard

Introduction 11

not quite accord ing to the manufacturer's instructions

While visiting my childhood home in Milwaukee, I came across my mother washin ome dishes at the kitchen sink. A not llnfamiliar sight. I looked around the ki chen and everything Was

idy, in order. Too much order. It se med like something was amiss.

"Isn't it pickling timer I a ked. e5, i s that ime of year," my mo her answered.

"Then wher are he gherkins?" Hln the bas ment."

Oh, of course, t he basem nt. I thought, and headed downstairs to view the harvest as if aI/ was right and proper. Half-way down I wond red, "Why on earth would the gherkins be n the basementr Then, as I looked around e basement the

gh rkins were still not in evid nce. "Where are they?" I shouted UP he staI rs. "In the washing machine," my mother called back, qUite nonchalantly and totally unexp ctedly. I wal ed over to the washer and opened the lid 0 see dozens of baby cucumbers being rliC Iy tossed around in the watery cycle of the Maytag.

"Not wha he salesmen had in mind," I laughed to myself. As I returned upstairs, inspired by my mo h r's ingenuity, J laughed harder and harder as I pictured washing machines the neighbou hood over- all Illed wi h Ii Ie green gherkins gently bathing in cool bas ments in lhe hot a emoon.

Dian often described the hard work of critical education in the context of social st ruggle, often in coalitions of interests, as being about "keeping difficult company" She said, '" always try to keep some difficult

company." Another t ime she put this less delicately as needing to have "at least two asshoIes around." And yet another time:

Wild Garden

When I worked at Participatory Research I found we had a lot of

homogeneity about our values, and i felt if I didn't get myself

into diverse situations I wou ld slip into great arrogance I would

start to think the whole world ran like our little bit. and if it

didn't it ought to or we're in deep and serious sh it What I had to

do to keep myself open (I would it humble) is to loiter with

other kinds of folks.'O

This need for "d ifficult company" can be seen as both a pragmatic and an

ideali stic venture pragmatica lly it recogn that those involved in

emancipatory education have differences that can cause creative

tensions; idealistically, it implies the need to embrace and negotiate

difference in order to evolve collectively The significance of conjunctural

meaning lies in its potential for helping us to embrace and include both

objective and subjective (constructionist. intuitive) ways of knowing.

Donna Haraway, a professor in the History of Consciousness program at

the University of California, Santa Cruz, points, for instance, to the

danger for fem inists of narrowing this search, of analysing everything

from the point of view of rad ical constructivism.11 Accord ing to Haraway,

a rejection of "objectivity" as having any legitimate meaning will almost

certainly exclude the constructivist from the terrain of scient ific inquiry,

allowi ng patriarchal science to proceed without any accountability to

feminist criticism.

"Hegemony" is a central theoretical construct in dian marino's work t hat

names a process of social-pol itical control persuasion of the mass of

society by a coalition of ruling-class interests, involving the consent of

the masses themselves (persuasion from above, and consent from

below) As media analyst Todd Gitlin explains the concept of hegemony:

"Those who rule the dominant institutions secu re their power in large

measure directly and indirectly, by impressing their definitions of the

situation upon those they ruie and, if not usurping the whole of

ideological space, still Significantly limiting what is thought throughout

the society""

What was once achieved by brute force-and still is today in

some societ ies~is now more often achieved through the promotion and

In t rod uction 13

14

legitimation of ideologies passed off as "common sense." The mass

media, education systems, entertainment and publicity industries,

popular culture institutions, and institutional ized religions all playa

major role in conveying ideology as simple, unassailable reality

Hegemony depends in good measure on both the obscuring (or mystifi­

cation) of power relations and the threat of coercion As dian puts it in

"Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind," wh ich opens th is collection:

"[ like the relational aspect of a concept like Ihegemony! as it resonates

with my experience and my art. I also like the flexibility the concept gives

me to move between the individual and the social; it tells me that

consent can be both personal and socia!. "

Another Gramscian term , "counterhegemony," signifies the

oppositional struggle for a new hegemony. If we see hegemony as a

system that organizes consent, we have the choice of reorganizing or

disorganizing that consent. If hegemony is a frame, we can challenge

that frame and work to "re:frame" whatever it is that is caught wi thin our

sights. One of Corita Kent's art-class exercises had a life-long impact on

dian Kent wou ld ask her students to glue Popsicle sticks together in

some sort of frame-square, rectangle, triangle, or whatever-and then

to go outdoors and throw their frames into the air as far as they could .

She asked the students to study what was "framed" wherever the st icks

landed, and to notice how the frame interacted with what was framed,

the "subject" In her thesis "Re:framing: A Critical Interpretation of the

Collective production of Popular Education Materials," dian concludes

that reframing "is most likely to happen when a group in the process of

producing something concrete (as in popular educational materials)

expresses and confronts the context of current everyday problems."13

A reJraming that disorganizes while reorganizing consent has

the potential to be a powerful anti-hegemonic tool. Dian argues that

consent is never one hundred per cent, that an individual 's or a group's

consent to the hegemonic routine is never complete-it is always in process-being established and re-established daily There are always a

few ledges, a few cracks, in the seemingly "monolithic" wall of consent.

When people work collectively, opportunities arise in which

communication and negotiation are necessary in order to proceed with

the work at hand. These are opportunities to convey different

experiences of creativity, co-operation, and leadership. They allow for the

posing of cri tical questions that can serve as frames for dialogue and

collective learning. As understandings of different experiences are

Wild Garden

negotiated, opportuni t ies to experience and reflect on cracks in consent

proliferate. The dialogues that happen in group situations are fil led with

chances to examine, even widen, cracks in consent

In this process of re :framing dian used a pedagogical tool that

she called the "structured criticism," which involved a student identifying

two or th ree connections made in a class-from a reading, an event , or

perhaps the class dynamic itself Students were encouraged to do the

exercise quickly, to use whimsical or personal headlines to title their

thoughts, and to challenge their own thinking

Dian told the following story to new students of the Faculty of Environmental Studies:

There was once a general of war who was t ired of fighting. He had spent his whole life perfecting his skill in all the arts of war, save archery, but now he was weary and wanted to end his career as a fighter. He decided to spend the rest of his days studying archery, and he began to search far and wide for a master who would teach him.

After much journeying he found a monastery where they taught archery, so he went in and asked if he could live there and study. He stayed ten years, practising and perfecting his skill as an archer. One day the abbot of the monastery came to him and told him he had to leave. The general of war protested, saying that his life in the world outside the monastery was over and that all he wished was to spend the rest of his days there. But the abbot insisted, saying the general was now a great archer and he must leave and go into the world and teach what he had learned.

The general did as he was told, and having nowhere else to go he decided to return to the village of his birth. After a long journey he was finally nearing the village when he noticed a bull's-eye drawn on a tree, with an arrow dead-centre in the

Introduction

16

target H was surprised by thi , and even more surprised as he

walked on to find other rees wi h bull's-ey drawn on them, with

arrows in the centre of every one. As h kept walking he saw, on

he barns and the buildings of the own, dozens, hundreds, of bull's-eyes, all with arrows stuck in the cent e.

The peace he had attained in all hears 0 monas it life and training left him, and he approa hed the Id rs of the town,

indignan that after te years of d voted s udy h should return to

his own home and find an afcher more skilled than he was. H

demanded hat the elders g t this master archer 0 meet him by an old mill at the edge 0 town in one hour.

WaJ lng by the mill, the gen ral saw no one coming to

mee hfm, hough he noticed a young girl plaYIng by the river. Ev ntually he girl came over, looked up at him, and asked, -Are you wai ing for someone)"

"Go away," he said,

"No, no," said the girl, ·you look like you're wat ing for

someone, and I was told a come and n eet someone her .

The general looked unbelievingly at the little girl and sold, "I'm waiting for the ma ter archer re ponsible or he hundreds of perfect shots I see around h re."

"That' me," aid the girl.

The general, even mo sceptical now, said, "If you're

telling the truth, explaIn to me. how you can get a perfect sho

every single' tim you shoot our arrow."

"That'~ easy," said the girl "I take my arrow and I draw I

ba k in the bow and pOint j' ve'ry, very waigh Then' let i go and whf:rever it lands I draw a buJl' -eye. ~

Wild Garden

A folk-tale like the story of

the general and bull's-eyes, a story

that dian would tell her students

at the beginning of a course,

wou ld become a way of disarming

listeners, dealing with the

inevitable nervousness of

beginning and communicating a

sense of care and fun This is a

rad ica lly subjective story to

introduce to new students coming

into the university to be

"instructed." The truly radical

teaching here is communicated

metaphorically define your own frame. The story enlarges one of the

"cracks" in dian's consent: as an

academic authority she is

authorizing students to define

their own terms, and she is doing

this not in a didactic way but in

the form of a narrative that allows

for mU ltiple interpretations. For

dian there are always contra­

dictions and disruptions (a

favourite word)-and the "contra­

dictions" and "disruptive

pa rticipation" aren't just in the

capitalist mainstream of

controlling institutions, but in her

own work, thought, feelings There

International Conference on Participatory Research, Venezuela, 1979, with Budd Hall

are always "mul tip le answers to problems," there is always

·'unexpected ." The term "creative misinterpretation" is hers; according to

friends and colleagues Leesa Fawcett and Ray Rogers, "She used it to

describe the way someone would !deliberately or otherwise I misinterpret

a question or piece of information so as to respond in such a way that

created a different perspective on 'what we already know' and shed new

light on it. "'·'

Introduction

~! !

' v~' ~-

.:f f

17

18

Through th is pract ice of re:framing, learn ing becomes not simply

a cognitive but also an emotional undertaking. As one of her students put it, "The entire class would be howling with laughter, and then we would stop and we'd rea lize-hey!- l've never thought about that before."ls

"Always be passionately aware that you could be completely wrong." This sobering aphorism acts as an excellent gatekeeper to the portals of crit ical thought. Dian marino taught many of us to open ourselves to unasked for and unpredictable learnings.

Indeed, the articles and art collected here show that dian herself

was ever changing, shifting in her positions and point of view. She was .always exploring where she had gone in her classrooms and in her relations with people. looking at what had gone right and, just as often,

what had gone wrong or, more importantly, gone missing-what had been silenced-what were the limitations of her methodology or

approach. Linda Briskin, a friend and co~worker at York University,

remarked on how dian shared her craft with people around her, the way "she went boldly to the truth of things when many of us hesitated ... the

way she surrounded herself with colour and light, hearts and stars, invigorating every room she was in. dian's joy, her sense of the possible,

and her outrageousness inspired new ways of seeing and being with the ordinary." 16

Had she lived there is no way of telling where she would have been now, in the closing years of the 1 990s, or what she would have thought about the content of these articles or the reproduction of her art. But we are certain that she would have gone on deconstructing,

reconstructing, taking risks, "embracing the mess"-Iearning by mistakes, affirming mistakes, and bouncing wild and wonderful ideas around in a

constant effort to subvert authority and shift the location of power and what she calls "the chunks of lived process."

Wild Garden

EI'4

1. Landscape for an I

EaSi ly Influenced Mind V Reflec tions on My E xp erience as an Artist and Educ ator /

M ine is not an unrelenting story of resistance. I see myself as very

much embedded in my community, with all the complexities that

accompany a sense of place. The story of my education is like other

stories, very untidy, cluttered with moments clarity and simplicity as

19

well as with curiously unfinished or incomplete thoughts. There is a wildness in me and the world I am part of. which I have to respect, and at the same time I know I have undergone a process of social construction as an artist and educator

My personal-and selective-history is not, then , a dichotomous development but rather a rain forest of moveable relations. It is closer to

a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel than a ministry of education report . In any case , I like to think that at least some of the materials I've produced as "artist" over the years illustrate this proposition: that critical thinking

and production can have creativity as an intimate constituent. These

tools help to explain some of the questions/confusions from my past experiences and have also enhanced my practice as an art ist and teacher. Some of the tools-like the term hegemony--can seem heavy, perhaps,

but 1 like the relational aspect of a concept like that as it resonates with my experience and my art. I also like the flexibility the concept gives me to move between the individual and the social; it tells me that consent can be both personal and social.

he g e:rn 0 n y Writer Phil ip Slater tells a story:

Wf 20

Once there was a man who lost his legs and was blinded in an acciden t. To compensate for his losses, he developed great strength and agility in his hands and arms, and great acuity in hearing. He composed magnificent music and performed amazing feats. Others were so impressed with his achievements that they had tflemselves blinded and their legs amputated I

This parable shocks us. "Certainly none of us would be so stupid as to blind or maim ourselves, " we respond. Yet, frequently, to interpret our

experience we have been persuaded to use categories (names) that are self~destructive or distracting. When I was thirty I was still using the

category "girl " to organize how I thought about myself No one had to come and point a gun at my head and say, "dian , don't take yourself

seriously" The attitude came with the name (category) that I was using to think about myself. Where did! learn to interpret myself in this less

than empowering way? All those everyday spots-the family, school, media, work, even play-persuaded me to see the world from someone else's point of view, without questioning how it might work differently for

me.

Wild Garden

Th is sort of persuasion is not always intentional. The people in

power are socialized too, and I think it is not so useful to think of

persuasion· only in a conspiratorial framework2

IGramsci'sj concept of hegemony embodied a hypothesis that

within a social order, there must be a substratum of

agreement so powerfu l that it can counteract the division and

disruptive forces arising from con flicting interests .. The masses,

Gramsci seems to be saying, are confined within the boundaries

of the dominant worldview, a divergent, loosely adjusted

patchwork of ideas and outlooks, which despite heterogeneity,

unambiguously serves the interest of the powerful. by mystifying

power relations. by justifying various forms of sacrifice and

deprivation , by inducing fatalism and passivity, and by narrowing

mental horizons .... The reigning ideology molds desires, values

and expectations in a way that stabilizes an inegalitarian

system.'

wild gardens

Environment is really important. I have to look at organic matter in order 0 be creative. I find built environmen interesting and oppressive. Because I use' everything that is within two and a half feet of me I have to take care that everything within two and a half feet of me is beautiful.

I'll grant you that my de mition of wild g-ardens may not be everyone's definition of b~autlful. Some people take tranquillizers to survive. I need a wild garden. If I cannot see or go among trees and plants I feel myself shrivelling up. I absolu ely need that kind of wild beauty, j nurtures m .

I also need at least "'10 assholes around. I I'm only around people I love, I search out asshol . I wan people to challenge me.

Landscape for an Influenced Mind 21

W, 22

Consent-the other side of persuasion- is complicated and

never comes without some resistance. When we consent to something

we take on a position that is not necessari ly in our best interests. The

languages of resistance are the ways in which we reveal to ourselves and

others that we are questioning the story I use the phrase "cracks in

consent" to construct from our persona l narrat ives a history of resistance

and even transformation. This shift to a more explicitly political

orientation can lead to empowerment, but it is not easy or automatic

There are also lots of examples of incomplete or sabotaged resistance.

Collective silk-screen with YWCA Committee on Violence Against Women Internationally (1984) V,/ild Garden

•

hands on

Identifying Cracks in Consent

• Use this tool when you want to clarify how we might be unintentionally

reproducing hegemonic patterns in our own lives and work, and to

consider how we might develop alternatives.

Everyone has a history of resistance, but we might not remember this history as

being about resistance because it is often coded in the language of the persuader.

The resistance might have been seen, for instance, as bad behaviour, inappropriate

actions, wrong attitudes, breaking the rules, or someth ing calling for punishment.

These histories of resistance have an impact on our efforts to develop a sense of

control over our learning.

This tool is meant as a way for us to recover and become sensitive to the

various voices of hegemony in our day-to-day lives. I've divided these voices into

four groups:

a) phrases of persuasion. These are expressions used by people in power to persuade

us that it is in our best interests to support their practices and policies. For

instance, "We have no other choices, it's inevitable," or "The tide of technology

and economics can 't be reversed ," or "The marketplace has to decide."

b) phrases of consent. When we try to make sense of our difficulties of making ends

meet, we can sometimes hear ourselves uttering consent phrases: '" can't seem to

get ahead, but we're all more or less in the same boat, so what can you do?" or

"This is a very complex problem, so let the experts [those in power] figure it out,"

or "It's just the way things are."

c) phrases of resistance. There are times when we actively resist or say no to

something: "No to lead poisoning," or "No to the de-indexing of pensions," or "No

to more hospital cutbacks," or "No to nuclear weapons."

d) phrases of transformation. These tend to describe a sense of well-being or of

power to change something, not just individually but structurally or socially. Such

phrases need to be used to celebrate and remember a particular moment or

situation from the point of view of those who now feel more empowered. In a

Landscape for Influenced Mind 23

24

hands on

language of persuasion, people take individual blame for problems; in a language

of transformation they begin to look at the systemic relations that create and

maintain the problems.

The phrases can often represent small and scarcely noticeable shifts. For

example, a group of people who were evaluating a project objected to the

heading "What we did wrong " and changed it to "What we could do better,"

wh ich they felt both affirmed their efforts and allowed them to be tough-minded

critics at the same time.

Or the phrases might represent a more dramatic shift in approach to a

problem. Someone in a factory, for instance, might be heard saying, "That

machine almost took my hand off. I should have known better-everyone knows

that you have to be careful on that machine." But a phrase of transformation

would be something like: "The company has known about the problems with that

machine for ages. They should do something about it-or we/ve got to get them to do something about it."

What we want to do is 1. Identify key phrases that are a part of either the persuasion or consent aspect of

hegemony.

2. Recover our own histories of resistance.

3. Identify how we might express our resistance and identify possible means of

transformation.

Here's how to do it 1. Ask participants to break into groups based on their everyday work situations.

2. Then ask each person in the group to say four or five sentences about key charac­

teristics of their work situations.

3. Ask participants to brainstorm phrases of persuasion-phrases used by people in

positions of power-that have pressured them to do something that from past

experience or through reflection they can now see was not in their best interests.

These phrases of persuasion can come from a wide range of voices: from

politicians-local, national, or international-to workplace "managers" or the

mainstream media.

Wild Garden

· hands on

4. Ask participants to brainstorm phrases of consent-expressions they've used

themselves, or tha t they've heard others saying - t hat tend to push them or the

others to agree to do something that may not be in their best interests.

5. Next, brainstorm a list of phrases of resistance-words that participants remember

saying themselves at certain times, or that they've witnessed in their own lives.

6. Ask participants to generate a list of phrases of transformation-things they say

when they feel that some significant change has taken place.

7. Report back: the phrases that the group comes up with in the various steps can

be reported back in a plenary session. Or they can be used as raw material for

producing a group mura l or a socio-drama, or used in some other creative way to

carry the learnings experienced in the small group out to the large group.

Languages of transformation are often compl icated. because they

propose an alternative and try not to reproduce relations of power over

people or places or other species. This is somet imes referred to as

counternegemony, but I find that often we use parall el constructions so that

too frequently counterhegemony comes to mean persuading and

obtaining a different con sent and thus reproducing relations of

domination and subord ination. The language of consent can dull our

imaginations in one sense, in that we become so used to thinking about

teaching, for example, as in "J am persuading and I have a position and

am not obiective"- and feel that we are therefore imposing ourselves­

or we hide our position and present an "objective account"-thus trying

not to impose our position. The notion that we can communicate and

articulate our position s, engaging with people but not overpowering

them, seems uni maginable

from consent to disruption

When we consent we use phrases that support the language of

persuasion. We police ourselves by continually repeating ideas like "This

is too complex," or "I'm not an expert." or "It's just the way things are and

who am I to tell the president he's naked?" We learn these phrases

throughout our life-long education . The persuasion of the dominant

powers establishes a powerful socializing of our imaginations that leads

us too often to making choices contrary to our own interests.

Landscape for an Influenced Mind 25

26

Recently I visited my parents' home, and many of the drawings and paintings that I had made during high school were up on the walls.

was struck by their stat ic qualities. They were often of objects and about objects rather than relationships For me this was an example of my consenting to a passive interpretation of my subjectivity as well as of my

role in representing the subjectivity of the world . StilL the works were about whatever was right under my nose The subject-matter was seldom

the exotic but usually an exploration of an everyday thing. I think there are cracks in our consent, and we resist where we can.

There seem to be acts of resistance throughout our individual

and social histories. Many of these actions of resistance, while courageous and creative, appear to be appropriated by the mainstream.

We can all probably remember moments in our own personal histories where we said, "No, that's not fair," or "No, you' re not doing what you said you would." We stand up to authority, whether it is at home, schooL

with an employer, or in the community, and yet gradually we come to understand that our clarity and wisdom are used to rationalize the

benevolence and tolerance of liberalism. We are reduced to being individuals , and many different methods are used to isolate and manage

our acts so that we can sometimes be left with the feeling that we are not "team players" or that we are "THE PROBLEM." There is another kind

of resistance, which is more socia l, and yet too frequently th is resistance ends up imprisoning us, not emancipating us in any long-term or

significant way. Paul Willis documents this kind of resistance in his book about rebell ious working-class "lads" who had a kind of organized

resistance but st ill ended up, in their own way, in maintaining existing relations of domination and subordination, both at the macro level and with their families:

Looking for the aesthetic in the everyday, in the ordinary, is a small gesture of advocacy. We hardly ever consent one hundred per cent

to our own invisibility, to our own subordination . Watching television, we

can all laugh at how dumb some commercials are. Al most every day we make critical observations or interpretations, yet somehow, until we breach the silence and send out an active "no!" we are not able to

organize that resistance, or take it seriously. I now understand an incident from a high-school art class as one

of those disempowering engagements. The art teacher told me I was "speCial " and should work in a room by myself so I wouldn't intimidate

the rest of the class. The problem from the teacher's point of view was

Wild Garden

-

that I tended to only listen to part of her directions for the ass ignments.

When I was asked to produce one mosaic, I'd make ten. Not all of these

productions worked, but some of them turned out fine-original yet

connective. My peers tended to foll ow the instructions more carefully,

often sabotaging their own creativi ty in the process They received B's

and C's, while I got !\s. But then after we were placed in separate rooms

we lost our opportuni ty to compare and ta lk about the work and marks.

So I was persuaded of and consented to the interpretation that as an

"artist" I was special, different. privileged, and that [ could intimidate my

peers and should stay away from them. I didn't wholly bel ieve this, and [

would sneak back in whenever possible and visit with them, though not

with any serious intentions; it was more an act of resist ing t he isolation.

! can on ly now imagine how disruptive it would have been to

start discussing who got what grades whi le we were making mosaics­

and then to begin analysing procedu res and the detai ls of where these

different marks might have come from. ! now know that creativity is

greatly enhanced by the act of producing many versions of what wou ld

otherwise seem to be the same thing, and that the process of making art

is not such a magical or exceptional pattern it can be learned. But the

myth of artistic creat ivity haunted me throughout my education as an

artist and was one of the most difficult to resist and t ransform when I

wanted to work as an artist within social st ruggles

These reflections suggest that there were procedures and

practices that domesticated me as an arti st. But [ also think there was a

wildness that came from my intuitive self and a cu rious and justice­

oriented part of me that wanted hurt and pa in to be healed and not

denied When the concept ion of change is beyond the limits of the

possible, there are no words to art icu late discontent, so it is sometimes

held not to exist. This mistaken belief arises because we can on ly grasp

silence in the moment in wh ich it is breaking. The sound of breaking

silence makes us understand what we could not hear before. But t he fact

that we could not hear doesn't prove that no pain existed.'

Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind 27

Jenny's gone fishing (1980)

8 . White Flowers and a Gri Z l y Bear Li ving w ith Can ce r

W hen I woke up in the recovery room in November 1978, my

doctor was waiting to tell me the results of the biopsy. It couldn't happen to me; I was just thirty-seven years old . But it had-l

had breast cancer. My feelings ricocheted all over the place. I was afraid, angry, grateful, and sad all at the same time. I remember thinking: 'Tve

145

146

been a caring person, how could this happen to me? It's not fair, it's so

arbitrary " I cried, wailed, and curled up into a ball, but I also continued to work-it seemed like my sanity depended on returning to "normal" as quickly as possible. A month of radiation treatments began a long series of checkups, more biopsies, and finally surgeries My last surgery was in 1983-a lymphectomy; afterwards I was put on a hormone blocker. Last

summer, the summer of 1988, I was nearing the famous "five-year" marker. which meant that statistically I had a much better chance of

surviving. Then I had a bone-scan and they discovered bone cancer in two places. I was put on another hormone blocker and given more

radiation. I had the summer to put my life into a new framework: "The best we can do is slow it down," they said.

Writing this is difficult. It brings up complex and contradictory memories. But it does add both a clarity and simplicity that wasn't there at the

time. Perhaps this article shou ld be written by my husband and daughters, who know what

happens when someone you love gets cancer. Or by my friends, who've shared my fears,

anger, frustration. and even the small

moments of beauty that have come from trying to make sense of cancer.

I have resisted putting words on paper

for fear of getting back on an emot ional roller coaster. Also because what has helped me to

understand and live more calmly with cancer may not work as a "prescription" for others.

The sense of loss of control is so great with this illness, that it is a time to be very careful

about issues of power and controL While waiting in clinics and hospital corridors I have

found that many people are not as enthusiastic as me about getting knowledge about their illnesses and for

playing an active role in their health care. Death is such a responsibility that I hesitate to project my keenness to be clearer, to understand better.

onto others who share my illness. I write not to prescribe but to describe and wonder aloud about some difficult times.

Wild Garden

For me there is irony in the act of reflecting on cancer, because I'm the kind of person who might easily have left these thoughts until five minutes before death. I too frequently gallop into new projects

without sufficient time for contemplation But in trying to make sense of cancer I think it is important to speak out in a straightforward manner. The knowledgegained from coming to terms with this disease too easily

remains in the hands of medical professionals So I stumble for words to speak of problems, responses, speculation, small rearrangements

As a visual artist and teacher I use many kinds of language For me the meaning of words changes with time and place. How we use words

indicates our values and priorities. I have found most writing about cancer disempowers those of us who have the disease. One example is the use of militaristic or war-like metaphors Words and phrases like

"fight," "beat." and "win the war" are commonplace But if I get into a "war" with my cancer, I can only interpret myself winning if my cancer

"loses" or is "defeated." This of either/or thinking reduces all experience to winning or losing. A person like myself with a "terminal" cancer has automatically lost.

We do need a language of resistance in our struggles with

chronic illness, but it needs to a language free of militarism. I found it

wonderfully healing to spend quiet time in nature-a form of resistance perhaps, but hardly a battle Even supposedly alternative language can

be infuriating. The "new age" philosophy of illness is a good example. At first. I would go out and buy the latest self-help books. only to fi nd the

basic message was "You made yourself sick. so you can heal yourself" So simple but so damaging. It fits ail too well with mass media messages

that bombard us daily: problems are individual. not social. We're kept disorganized with a Simplistic presentation of blame and responsibility.

I began to think about how I got cancer. I read and asked around. There were many possible explanations-heredity (my grandmother died very young from breast cancer), occupational hazards (for the previous

twenty years I had made silk-screen prints using highly toxic paints and clean-up solutions). poor diet, lack of exercise, too much stress, birth­

control pills. and many more. Often I read that one or another of these factors was the primary cause. I found this completely immobilizing, so

gradually I developed a map, a kind of ecology of possible causes. This

White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear

... ·~f~:;~~. 147

allowed me to deal wi th those dimensions that I had some control over. I didn't feel like I needed to have a "scient ific map," but could elaborate my own open map so that as my experience grew I could alter it.

By the t ime cancer was diagnosed I had an excellent relationship with my doctor. He trusted me as an expert on my aches, pains, and

feelings; I trusted him because he was able to tell me what he didn't know as well as what he did. He also knew how to cry. Most doctors see surgery as a response to unhealth, he told me. So advice from a surgeon

must be seen from this critical vantage point. He was open to my exploring alternat ive health supports (li ke massage therapy) and would ask me whether they were having any effect. It was important to me to

understand the limits of medical knowledge and to recognize the intuitive as a legitimate part of making decisions.

In the first five years I had four surgeries. Whenever I asked the experts about the odds of survival for different cancers, at first they

would answer ambiguously. When I persisted they would get more precise. Later I learned this was ca lled "staging," a way of finding out what patients really want to know. Some doctors withhold information

based on whether or not they think you can hand le it. I would say you should lose those characters fast. If they can 't trust you, how can you

ever t rust them? I need to know as much as possible so I can get the most out of

the time I have left. It doesn't mean that I wasn't overwhelmed and anguished when I heard cancer had returned. But knowledge and understanding helped liberate me from self~destructive fear, anger, and

sadness. These feelings are always close by. But now I have learned to treat them as reminders of my current agenda- to figure my way as

creatively and peacefully as possible through the last part of my life.

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epitaph

You had to writ hos hmgs In high school-wha do you want -saId about you-what do you call it? That speech at the end: EPITAPH. I said I wou ld lik it to be known tha I wen hrough the world and caus d eopl to be happier, to laugh more. At tI e tim I considered myself a

Mr. Blue. So I thought that was a gr at goal in lif I was he aides in my family, my sister was eigh een months

younger than I was. and one of my cons ant recollections of being a kid was my younger SIS er telling me to grow up and stop laughing. I saw hings as quite funny for a long ime.

Through he middle part of my life, especially during the seventies, I f It mar obligated, more pressure, as a woman I guess, to be more discreet about seeing hings as fu ny all the time. I felt

White Flowers and Grizzly Bear 149

I : ! " I I

: ;

i I

ISO

perhaps I was laughmg and enJoYing myself too much. Maybe I had a fear of su 55- maybe that's why I would tend to laugh instead of being serious. Bu at hat Ime my sense was that to ge ahead-and I am very compe it ive, a high-need achiever- weJl, I thought. maybe "m avoiding some hing by laughing. It was also a very humanistic, Introspective period when a lot of my frIends were trying to get rid of their blocks. I kept holding out for keeping a few. I said, you know, something tha '5 been a(ound for 0 long seems like you should keep wo of hem. just in case, kind of like Noah's ark. And I was really

nervous about divesting myself of all kinds of blocks in those little T­group sessions.

I use my humour 0 undermin authority, I remember a gestalt war hop where I couldn't believe the contradictions about everyone being free and open and equal, and the leader was obscuring the fact tha he was totally in control of he group-he got to name" everything that was going on, like projections, contact, unfinished business, and so on. $0 I went after him. playfully. At the midpoint of a morning session he calfed for a break and told people they could do whatever they wan ed for h n t half hour. One woman went over to a corner of the room and stood on her head. The leader remarked, "That's called showing off." I shoLlt d out, "That's called interpretation." I was trying 0

tell him that despite wna he was teaching he was always one up on the re of us. I would hay been comfortable if he had own d up 0 tha • but he wouldn't, He r lIy wan ed to keep i as if we wer all equal.

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r

192

connect are far better than never responding for fear of doing "the wrong

thing" A few people told me about their friends' ills (back pains, for example) as a way of connecting, As much as I appreciated their concern, I always to say, "Hey, wait a minute, this disease is life-

threatening I'm afraid I'm going to die too soon." Even now friends I see every years will call to say hello and find out the latest

news, In moments of crisis I find it healing to know my friends are not

denying my most recent of cancer. I'm afraid. I fear my cancer will isolate me socially, People with intentions will treat me as incompetent and exclude me, I fear

will sorry for me and patronize me-clenying the energy and I bring to current phase of my life. Recently a person I

considered a close friend did just that He told me he was close to me he felt sorry for me and that I was naive to think otherwise. I felt

angry to in such a cold and clinical fashion. It is one thing to feel sad. But if you feel sorry for me you distance yourself

from my pain in a way that denies my status as an actor in my own life. Friends like this are toxic and I will resist being anyone's social work

project or charity case.

Last summer, during my test 1 could tell by the way the that something had shown up. He went out of the

room and when he reappeared he said, "You look a lot younger than you

are. Do you have any children?" I "You checked my file." To which he "Yes." I was sure that had identified some cancer.

That same day I went to my massage therapist I decided this was a unique moment in my life when I could look into my psyche. When

I am very frightened I sometimes have the courage to face or to see the

was a

as my friend did his work [ decided to let go and see what

The first image was very surprising to me. There carrot (white flowers composed of many smaller white

trees. Strolling through field was a confident, and curious as he moved

he stopped and

Garden

So long it's been good to know you

laugh and I flew back into the ground except for one small white flower,

which landed on his shoulder. Together we stroll ed away.

The next day the doctors confirmed bone cancer. My husband

Chuck and J have been separated for four years, but are sti ll fi ne friends,

and almost immediately we began to look for a cottage or a place for me

to be still. I sometimes fee l my cells vibrating from too much work or not

enough sleep, and I imagine that 1 can see them all jangled and in

motion. I told Chuck that I had a recurring dream that I needed to spend

t he last part of my life on a lake surrounded by t rees with a beach. This

became a guide for us We found an island we liked called Cranberry

Island, and Ch uck had a cottage built

The day after we bought the property we went to look at it again,

and much to my delight in t he middle of the cranberry bog was a large

patch of white flowers The lake is called Kahshe , which I later found out

means "healing waters." I am keeping my eye out for the grizzly

White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear IS3

So long it's been good to know you

laugh and I fl ew back into the ground except for one small white flowe r,

which landed on his shou lder. Together we strolled away

The next day the doctors confirmed bone cancer. My husband

Chuck and I have been separated for four years, but are still fine friends,

and almost immediately we began to look for a cottage or a place for me

to be stilL I sometimes feel my cells vibrating from too much work or not

enough sleep, and I imagine that I can see them all jangled and in

motion, I told Chuck that I had a recurring dream that I needed to spend

the last part of my on a lake surrounded trees with a beach, Th is

became a guide for us. We found an island we liked called Cranberry

Island, and Chuck had a cottage built.

The day after we bought the property we went to look at it again,

and much to my delight in the middle of the cranberry bog was a large

patch of white flowers The lake is called Kahshe, which I later found out

means "healing waters," [ am keeping my eye out for the grizzly

White Flowers and Bear 153

I I ~ . ~~~ .- .. ~--------~-~-This year some things wild

194 Wild Garden

Notes

Introduction

I. Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (New York: Verso, 199 I), p 119. 2. Lanie Melamed, interview with dian marino, Toronto, September 1982. 3 See Corita Kent and Jan Steward, Learning blJ Heart (New York: Bantam

Books, 1992).

4. Annemarie Gallaugher., interview with dian marino, 987 5. "Critical Education for Social Change," York University course, videotape,

Ian 20, 1987. 6. Kent and Steward, Learning by Heart, p.4.

7. Kevin T Corbett, student, in Alumni Newsletter, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Winter 1993, pA.

8. "Critical Education for Social Change," York Universi ty course, videotape,

Jan. 20, 1987. 9. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks , ed. Quintin Hoare and

Geoffrey Nowell -Smith (London Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p353

10. "Critical Education for Social Change," York University course, videotape, Jan . 20, 1987.

11. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women The Reinvention of Nature (New York Routledge, 1991), pp.186-87

12. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching : Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p.IO.

13. dian marino, "Re:framing: A Critical Interpretation of the Collective

Production of Popular Education Materials," phD. thesis, University of Toronto, 1984, 165.

14. Introductory book proposal, by Leesa Fawcett and Ray Rogers, for

"Creative Misinterpretations Essays on Popular Education, Nature, and Social Relations," mimeo, York University, undated.

15. A student's comment, in "In Celebration of dian," memorial notebook,

Toronto, Jan. 5, 1993. 16. Linda Briskin, "I Think of You and I Am Happy," Newsletter, The York Centre

for Feminist Research, February 1993.

I. Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind: Reflections on My Experience as an Artist and Educator

1. Philip Slater. Earthwalk (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1974), p.7. 2. E. Sull ivan, A Critical Psychology: Interpretation of the Personal World (New York

Plenum, 1984)

Notes ISS

lS6

3. J Fermia, Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony , Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp.30-45.

4. Paul Willis , Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class lobs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)

5. Sheila Rowbotham, Woman's ConSCiousness , Man's Wo rld (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1973), pp.29-30.

4. Drawing from Action for Action: Drawing and Discussion as a Popular Research Tool

I. Laurence Kubie, "Some Unresolved Problems of the Scientific Career," American Scientist 41,4 (1953) .

2. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press , 1964) 3. Budd Hall , "Creating Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly," Working Paper

no I , Participatory Research Project, Toronto, 1977; Ross Kidd and Martin Byram, "Popular Theatre," Working Paper no.5 , Participatory Research Project, Toronto, 1978.

4. See, for instance, Paulo Freire, LADOC Key Hole Series: Paulo Freire (Washington, D.C: Division for Latin America, USCC, 1974).

5. Budd Hall, Practical Issues in the Democratisation of Research in Non-Formal Education in the Commonwealth (New Delhi, India: Commonwea lth Secretariat Conference on Non-Formal Education for Development, 1979) See esp. p6.

6. Freire, LADOC Key Hole Series , p.5. 7. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London : BBC and Penguin Books, 1972), p.33. 8. See, for instance, Deborah Barndt, "People Connecting with Structures: A

Photographic and Contextual Exploration of the Conscientization Process in a Peruvian Literacy Program." Ph .D. dissertation , Michigan State Univers ity, 1978; Deborah Barndt, Themes and Tools for ESL (Toronto: Ministry of Cu lture and Recreation) ; P O'Gorman. "Conscientizat ion: Whose Initiative Should It Be?" Convergence 11,1 (1978) ; and Kidd and Byram, "Popular Theatre," p.3 .

9. Rose Goldsen. The Show and Tell Machine (New York: Delta Del Publishing Co., 1978 ); Stuart Ewen. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (Toronto: McGraw-Hili . 1976); Raymond Williams, Communications (New York: Penguin Books, 1976).

10 Klaus Mueller, The Politics of Communication (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

1 L Berger, Ways of Seeing , p.7. 12. Mike Samuels and Nancy Samuels, Seeing with the Mind's Eye: The History,

Techniques and Uses of Visualization (New York: Random House/Bookworks Book, 1975), pp.13 , 17.

Wild Garden

13. Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley University of California Press.

1969), pv. 14. Samuels and Samuels, Seeing with the Mind's Eye, p66

15. Meredith Tax, "Introductory: Culture Is Not Neutral. Whom Does It Serve?" in Radical Perspectives on the Arts , ed Lee Baxandall (Baltimore Penguin 1972), pp.23, 24.

16. Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck, tran s David Kunzl e (New York International General Editions, 1975)

17. Eva Cockcroft, John Weber. and lames Weber, Toward a People's Art (New York E.P Dutton and Co, 1977)

18, Tax, "Introductory:' p28

19, Gracie Lyons, Constructive Criticism: A Handbook (Berkeley, Cal: Issues in Radical Therapy, 1976); Dian Marino, "Community Self-Portraits," Ideas and Action (Un ited Nations, Food and Agricu ltural Organization L nO. 124 ( 1978)

20, Robert McKi m, Experiences in Visual 1972), pAO

21, Goldsen, Show and Tell Machine,

5. Obstacles to Speaking Out

(Monterey, CaL Brooks/Cole.

I, Wallace Clement, The Canadian Corporate Elite: An Analysis of Economic POlilCr (Toronto McClelland and Stewart, 1975 L p 298

2. Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, p.29.

3. Ibid, p80 4, Judith Wi lliamson, Decoding Advertising and Meaning in Advertising

(London and Boston Marion Boyars, 1978), pp 13, 170, 5, Hans Magnus Enzensberger. The Consciousness Industry: On Literaturi!, Politics

and the Media (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), p95 6, Ibid.

7, Armand Mattelart, Multinational Corporations and the Control of Culture: The Ideological Apparatus of Imperialism, trans. Michael Chanam (New York

Humanities Press, 1979); lames Monaco, Media Culture (New York Del l Publishing , 1

8, Mattelart, Mel/fina tional Corporations and t{le COIltral of Culture, p, 131 9, Ibid, pIli

10, Max Boas and Steve Chain, Big Mac The Unauthorized Story of McDonald s (New York Mentor Books, 1977), p 103.

11. Ibid, P 106 12, Enzensberger, Consciousness Industry, p 113

13.lbid, p114. 14. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (London: Methuen, 19761.

p62

Notes 157

I I I I

+

IS8

6. Re:framing: Hegemony and Adult Education Practices

I. Ariel Dorfman, Tlie Empire's Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Sabar. and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982) , p59.

2. For the literature on hegemony, see R. Simon, Gramsd's Political Though t (London: Lawrence and Wishart. 1982).

3. Gramsci, Selections the Prison Notebooks, pA19 4. Gitlin, Whole World Is Watching, p.253 5. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University

Press, 1977). p.112 6. E. Sullivan, "Mass Media and Political Integration: Thematizing Three

Major Dailies in a Canadian City," paper presented at Annenberg Communication Conference, Philadelphia, 1983, p.2.

7. Tony Wilden, The Imaginary Canadian: An Examination for Discovery (Vancouver: Pulp Press, 1977), p.80.

8. See, for instance, Whole World Is Watching. 9. Sullivan, Critical PSfjcflOlogy .

10. Sullivan, Critical Psychology; Z. Bauman, Hermeneutics and Social Science (New York Columbia University Press, 1978).

I!. Sullivan, Critical Psychology, pl21. 12. Deborah Barndt. Ferne Cristal!. and dian marino, Getting There Producing

Photostories with immigrant Women (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1982). 13 . /. Akiwenzie, Halloween from Beginning to End (Toronto The Friendship

Centre, 1979).

7. Revealing Assumptions: Teaching Participatory Research

I. Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, Man's Wo rld. 2. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982) 3. R. Modlich, "Women Plan Toronto Shared Experiences and Dreams,"

Toronto, 1985; London Planning Advisory Service. 1987, "Planning for Women: An Evaluation of Consultation in Three London Boroughs," London, England

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Notes to yourself

Notes 139