Ah. The simple pleasures to be had from walking in the park and enjoying the gardens. Who can resist a late afternoon promenade „neath shady boughs, providing opportunity to see and be seen? Well not in Phnom Penh. In the words of the Joni Mitchell song; they paved paradise. And put up a parking lot. Municipal planning honchos have, in the recent past, displayed a preference for sun-scorched concrete piazzas over tree-lined and show flower-planted avenues in the manner of, say, the parks of Saigon. But the organizers of this year‟s Phnom Penh Our City Festival are determined that we shall enjoy the gardens! It simply means bringing them to us.
Throughout the Our City Festival (which runs from the 8th to 18th September) expect to see a convoy of miniature gardens on wheels being pushed along the highways and byways of Phnom Penh. Organizers want the small carts filled with plants and flowers to bring unexpected life and colour to the city‟s streets. The mobile gardens will visit quiet lanes, busy market places, famous monuments, and new shopping strips, travelling alone or, joining together, „pop up‟ (very now) and form instant public parks.Concepts of locally-based art collective, artXprojects, in collaboration with Mina Bui Jones, the gardens are being planted by students of the Prek Leap
National Agricultural College in Phnom Penh. Throughout the festival they will be pushed by members of the Cyclo Association and volunteers. Sponsorship is coming from the Wildlife Alliance. But isn‟t this just a bit of Barang tomfoolery? There is a lot of greenery in the city, after all. Speak out Kate O‟Hara, bubbly Co-Curator of the festival (along with her artXprojects partner, Natalie Pace). “You ask tough questions!” she laughs. “It‟s about seeing the potential of vacant space and unoccupied plots. We have a Green message. There‟s a relationship between the growth of city, and the growth of the plants and trees in it”. There certainly is. During the twentieth century the planet’s urban population grew ten-fold, and now more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas. Recent studies suggest that plants in cities and towns make a major contribution towards removing carbon from the atmosphere. The guerrilla gardening movement, which seeks to utilise public space in the face of officialdom, is gathering pace in Europe and the United States. Benefits that community gardening can bring to individuals, neighborhoods, communities and cities are becoming increasingly obvious: the urban environment is an ecosystem and needs to be treated as such.
In this context, the mobile gardens are part of the zeitgeist that the Our City Festival‟s theme In Between Places: Participation in the City captures. The process of urbanization in Phnom Penh is at a critical point – how do its denizens respond? Now in its fourth year, Our City Festival want us to explore the city with fresh eyes, discovering different perspectives in the „in between places‟, Australian Graffiti, an exhibition by the artist Christian Thompson, brings an international flavour on cultural identity to the festival. A three-day program at Meta House featuring films on urbanism and art in the city sounds right up the street of quite a lot of us. In another highlight, Open Doors Phnom Penh both celebrate and pose questions on the theme of architecture and urban design by offering the opportunity of free access to public and private buildings.
And a glimpse, hopefully, of their static gardens. Which is the point of the Mobile Gardens. “By bringing gardens to the people we hope to stimulate and debate the role they should play in the urban landscape” says Kate “This is a way to get the general population to think about the ways that public spaces, in whatever form, can be enjoyed. It‟s all about the interaction”. Some which is likely to be comic, she concedes. “We are not sure what to expect, we hope people enjoy the spectacle, but also that it leads to conversations about what they might mean”. The writer of this piece hopes to personally engage in those exchanges – as a convert to the intent – by pushing a cart (sorry, Mobile Garden) during the festival.
The Mobile Gardens will be launched at a street party, open to all, in the alley next to Java Café and Gallery, between 6pm and 10pm on Thursday, 8th September. There will be food, drinks and live music. It‟s an opportunity to find out more about what promises to be an exciting, culturally significant, event for our city. See you there.
Thanks to Charley for this great article. Just to also note that the project was also n association with the Cyclo Conservation and Careers Association (CCCA).
