Trans Am Totem

Why is art that deals with our relationship to nature so minimized in today’s art world?

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John K. Grande is a Canadian author, poet and curator. His writing has been published in magazines such as Artforum, Vice Versa, Art Papers, Ciel variable, LensCulture On Paper, Border Crossings and Landscape Architecture. He has written several books, including Balance: Art and Nature; Intertwining: Landscape, Technology, Issues, Artists; and Art Nature Dialogues: Interviews with Environmental Artists. Grande’s latest book, Art, Space, Ecology: Two Views - Twenty Interviews, will soon be published in German and Spanish editions.

Trans Am Totem, a public sculpture in Vancouver that features five cars stacked atop the trunk of a majestic old-growth cedar, grasps a key issue of our time: Humanity’s relationship to the ecosystem. Using vehicles donated by a local scrap yard – a Pontiac Trans-Am, a BMW 7 Series, a Honda Civic, a VW Golf Mk1 Cabriolet and a Mercedes-Benz – Vancouver artist Marcus Bowcott made Trans Am Totem with his wife, Helene Aspinall, as an installation for the 2015 Vancouver Biennale. The pro bono engineering by Eric Karsh included supports so deep underground the work could withstand an earthquake. 

Trans Am Totem emphasizes the expendable character of cars and the endurance of trees. All this, even though trees have a temporary life and procreate while cars have a temporary life and are manufactured. The colourful vertical arrangement of these vehicles atop a tree suggests a kind of natural endurance. The status trophies of our era become redundant expendable ghosts. Trees remain.

When Trans Am Totem was put in place near Science World, the cars were painted in vibrant colours, a reference to advertising and splashy consumerism. Those colours have faded over time and birds have enacted their own transformations, ultimately contributing to the city’s decision to remove the work, as was done several days ago, with the city noting the site was always temporary due to long-range redevelopment plans for the area, including demolition of the Georgia Viaduct.

The politics of public art suggests shifting sands, not permanence, in tandem with the remarkably mercurial character of taste in the art world. What could be permanent can be recategorized, reallocated, relocated or simply removed. Historicity is no longer guaranteed. Fashion in art involves virtually anything except art with a conscience and a sense of our place in nature.

I am reminded of this with the recent public art tribute to the late Princess Diana in the garden of London’s Kensington Palace. The work, by British sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley, has no gusto, no identity. Insidiously, this Diana seeks universal appeal by avoiding any commitment to character or expression. And so, there is a new kind of violence. This is violence by omission of experience, of life, of being who we are. 

Several years before Trans Am Totem, Bowcott painted, West of the Musqueam Reserve and South of the University, a panoramic work that portrays a log boom on a grey day. The forest in Bowcott’s painting is logged and horizontal. Bowcott says Trans Am Totem was a logical follow-up. Like the painting, it inverts our natural perceptions of vertical and horizontal. Cars function on a horizontal (or nearly horizontal) surface. In the sculpture, they are presented vertically.

The tree that supports these cars is a symbol of interdependence, of how nature’s resilience has a power we can never equal. Since it was first put in place, Trans Am Totem has been immensely popular with the public, who may, or may not, know much about art. Readily visible to pedestrians, cyclists, SkyTrain passengers and motorists, it became a landmark. 

The work is also respected by some of Vancouver's leading artists. For instance, Ian Wallace, in a letter of support to the city's public art committee, called Trans Am Totem “one of the most brilliant and relevant works of public art in the city.” He cited its “powerful message” and noted that it offers an “original and uncanny metaphor for the inversion of what we claim to value and what we actually value.”

Trans Am Totem was originally meant to be installed for a two-year period. That was extended for two years, and then, in 2019, billionaire Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon Athletica, stepped in, donating $250,000 to ensure the sculpture would be a permanent piece of public art. It was transferred into the city’s public art collection.  

One question now is what will replace it at the corner of Quebec Street and Milross Avenue. A high-volume traffic lane, and yet another endorsement of vehicular traffic with a green space to placate those who oppose it? Art with a message often seems to be a no-go in today’s world. 

Another question is where the city will relocate Trans Am Totem. Eric Fredericksen, the head of public art for the city, recently told CBC News the location is ultimately up to the city as it owns the piece, although Bowcott has been consulted about potential sites.

Bowcott would like the restored sculpture placed along Great Northern Way, where Emily Carr University is now located. That area, with its roadways, bike and pedestrian paths and elevated transit, is the best context the sculpture could have, as it includes a cultural component and various transit elements. Bowcott is not a fan of another potential site at a major suburban intersection along Southeast Marine Drive.

Still, he is upset the city allowed the sculpture to degrade to the point where it had to be removed. “It is one thing for the sculpture to naturally degrade, but quite another thing for the City of Vancouver cultural services branch to deliberately allow it to get covered in mould, dirt and acidic bird shit as a pretext for removing it,” he says. “I’m not concerned about the sculpture degrading – going back to nature – but I am concerned about how the city directs the devolution. 

“The sculpture is now the property of the City of Vancouver. We are in a legal bind in relation to the sculpture and its condition. We’ve consulted a lawyer about our moral rights as artists, and we could demand it be maintained as contractually agreed upon. But we’ve decided not to go the legal route, considering it would likely be a waste of time and bad energy – and expensive.”

As a writer who has dedicated some 35 years to art’s place in the ecosystem, I find Bowcott’s apolitical answer ingenious and very much in the Greta Thunberg vein. If all else fails, he says he will  plant vines and other green living forms so they can envelop the art. Before, during and after conception, this work affirms continuity and a transformative aspect that goes beyond the object, or a banal kind of dumbed-down public art that embodies a cult of distraction. God bless! 

Why is art that deals with our relationship to nature so minimized in today’s art world, and in the gallery-museum complex? Indeed, as climate change proves, no amount of rationale or economic justification can erase the physics of nature. It ultimately governs the living places we design, the ways we produce food and the provision of clean water. This is the world we really inhabit.

Let’s hope that public pressure and an offer of suitable space could prompt a fortuitous move for Trans Am Totem, by next summer, when it is supposed to be refurbished and bird-proofed. Bowcott, in his decision not to be in an endless rage at the machine, is content to let nature guide his work on its path into the future, into ephemerality. ■  

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