Mill

de Jesse Birch, Will Holder

The Mill is the second of three projects to engage the resource industries of Vancouver Island (mining, forestry, and fisheries) through contemporary art and writing. This volume responds to forestry: a mobile industry of logging camps that follow the trees; prices that rise and fall; mills that open and close; communities that boom and bust. In The Mill, artworks are accompanied by a multiplicity of voices, including forestry workers, plant ecologists, and indigenous land stewards. Together, these perspectives chart the cultural and material shifts brought about when trees become commodities. Expanded from two contemporary art exhibitions, Silva Part I: O Horizon and Silva Part II: Booming Grounds, The Mill examines forgotten or under-acknowledged histories, while considering both local sites and forms of cultural expression that surround international forestry practices.