Saskatoons Waterfront

Today I was walking along the paths of the South Saskatchewan River, seeing the picturesque areas that I have heard of from people who enjoy Saskatoon. As I was looking at the nice river with its strangely perfect banks and groomed parks, I wondered, what gender is this space? How do we categorize a space as masculine or feminine, and how does a well kept city park flanking a Prairie river justify a gender categorization in any way?
The park itself was extremely man made, with groomed paths, hand planted park trees, pavilions and boat ramps leading to the water. Sandwiched between Broadway Bridge and University Bridge, I question how natural the banks of the river are, I am sure they were built up and altered for support and structure of the roadways and the parks topography seemed altered to support pedestrian movement rather than the hillier roads and riverside. But this man made alteration to nature does not speak of a gender. While constructed within a patriarchal development, I wouldn’t say that masculinizes the space itself in how it used in everyday life. The space becomes an urban greenspace, but the gender it carried did not lean towards masculine, but perhaps towards feminine due to the romantical nature of the paths at dusk.

Due to the romantic time of day, I noticed almost immediately that the space was heterosexual. The park was full of heterosexual couples going for walks down the green spring spaces. Walking for a similar reason with my girlfriend, I felt as a minority within the public space. While the space seemed to be accepting of all kinds of people from couples to families, male and female identities, the homosexual demographic seemed to be missing. Another option Lisa and I had considered for the night was to go to the gay bar, where we would have found a dominant homosexual crowd, but instead chose the park and encountered a very heteronormative demographic.

I will return to this park at another time of day to evaluate its gender in different context. Without the setting sun and the emerging streetlights, this space would lend itself to a very different crowd. The use of the space influences the perceived gender of the space, so I will return to get photographs of the space, but also to observe the use of the space at a different time of day.

Zoo

The last couple of days have felt more like a vacation than anything else between the packing, the visiting and the exploring. I was just left at Laura’s house by Lisa, who drove me up and distracted me sufficiently in the last couple of days. We went to the Zoo, which was an exploration of spaces through the designation of space to the animals, some of which appeared to pace back and forth in a manic search for something, others actively seeking out visitors of the cage to emit a plea for freedom, love, food. The Zoo has an interesting persepective on animal freedom, one which emphasized breeding to preserve a species rather than proper care. While I am sure the mangled fur of the coats of the animals were mid spring shedding, the closely cropped cages provided no more than a bedroom for these animals. The ‘habitats’ only mimicked the natural world in their basic construction, The prairie dogs were given PVC piping as burrows and the mountain goats were able to climb a 10 foot boulder and dirt mountain, the animals demonstrated a containment that is mimicked within our city limits, attempting to constrict a beings movements and actions. Recently a Korean Zoo has suspected an elephant’s sexual preference, as he shows no interest in females as he hits puberty. If in fact the elephant shows no interest in mating with the opposite sex to continue the mandate of the zoo, they will put him down. While Korea is known for its strict punishments for homosexual activity and we can hardly ask them to give exception to an elephant, I wonder if it is possible for a more progressive country to take in an example of homosexuality within the animal kingdom.

Once Lisa left, I began to concentrate on exploring the city so as to access and familiarize myself with the spaces in the city. Getting to opportunity to bike through downtown everyday, I get a lot of exposure to the highly populated areas of the city. I have begun to map out places that I would like to include in my project of the city.

I am unsure of where to start with this project, I am not used to being aware of the spaces of the city at all, preferring to avoid them altogether rather than exploring their spaces. I am not yet sure how to even recognize the gender of some spaces, spaces that are gendered through interactions rather than visual components. My project requires my own intervention into the space, taking the gender of the space and contradicting it; refuting the classification that has been set upon it by the patriarichal construction that created it or inhabits it.

I will also be exploring the existence of alternate identities within spaces, looking at spaces that have been claimed by homosexual culture, looking for the expression of gender even in queer spaces, which are usually more accepting of gender construction.

Judith Butler discusses gender performativity within her book Gender Trouble (1990) introducing gender as a performance, an act that is often determined by genitals rather than identity. Even when expressing your true gender, you are performing it through your clothes and interactions, and these performances come together into small scenes played over and over within the public realm. Certain expectations determine the gender performance, a man in a dress is not exactly an accepted sight within a lot of areas within the city.

I suppose I am interested in how the spaces of the city encourage a certain kind of interaction. How do people express their gender and sexuality within public gathering spaces that encourages a certain kind of gender expectation? How is identity formed by the spaces of the city? How do the spaces of the city constrict people to certain areas of the city or restrict their behaviour within the city? Would a man wear the same clothing if he were going out to the drag bar as he would in other public spaces within the city?