For the past year or so artist Gareth Moore has, with permission, homesteaded on the Documenta 13 fairgrounds, growing food in his garden, mending socks in his shack.

Upon seeing this first online image of Gareth's compound I was reminded of artists such as Tom Burrows who, in the 1960s, did something similar on the Maplewood Mudflats in North Vancouver. Not with permission, but through a loophole that had their intertidal squat secure in the grey zone between municipal and federal jurisdictions.

In 1971, these shacks were burned down and bulldozed by the District of North Vancouver.

A couple years ago artist Ken Lum, with the help of the Vancouver Art Gallery, mounted a de-scaled version of this shackland shangri-la at the foot of Vancouver's brand new Shangri-la Hotel.