Michael
Piazza
Proposal:
Topiary table with apple tree (meditations on the World's Congress)
by Michael Piazza
on unadorned
Nature:
"How
contrary to this Simplicity is the modern Practice of Gardening; we seem
to make it our Study to recede from Nature, not only in the various Tonsure
of Greens into the most regular and formal Shapes, but even the monstrous
Attempts beyond the reach of the Art itself: We run into Sculpture, and
are yet better pleas'd to have our Trees in the most awkward Figures of
Men and Animals, than in the most regular of their own."
Alexander Pope, "On Gardens," in The Guardian, Tuesday,
September 29, 1713
on utopia
beyond history to Messianic Time:
"The
beginning and the basis of this vision lie in the Messianic concept of
the Old Testament prophets. The essential idea of this concept is that
man, after losing his primary and pre-individual unity with nature and
with his fellow man (as symbolically expressed in the story of the Fall
and the expulsion from Paradise), begins to make his own history. His
act of disobedience was his first act of freedom."
Erich Fromm, Forward to Looking Backward 2000–1887, by Edward
Bellamy, 1888.
Proposal
for Topiary Table with Apple Tree (Meditations on the World's Congress)
Two rows
of ten dense yews or box shrubs will be planted, pruned, and shaped together
into a long table of human scale. An apple tree will be planted at one
end of the table (another tree must be planted elsewhere in the vicinity
for cross-pollination.)
Upon realization
of the design, a series of meetings will convene using the table to gather
around. The meetings will reference the World's Congress Conference which
took place at the Art Institute of Chicago built for the Columbian Exposition
in 1893 as a point of departure.
What are
the ramifications, today, of directives made by a selected privileged
few during this time? What place does utopic or visionary thought have
at present?
After meetings at the topiary table, the bushes can grow according to their nature, albeit slightly determined as to where they were planted. Apples from tree will skirt strict vendor laws and provide free sustenance.
Michael
Piazza
mpiazza@condor.depaul.edu