video/performance
embodied, land, decolonization, map, countermapping
February 2022
How can I reflect on the colonial exercise of map-making and my own complicity in it?

I am interested in critically exploring the white settler experience and questioning how this can be embodied and considered without adding to colonial violence. Can I trouble my own understanding of my place as a white settler-descendent and guest in Mi’kma’ki? 

In this series, I am attempting to follow threads of interest and discovery through the embodied experience, which in this specific thumbnail-of-a-performance-piece led me to an interest in the experience of trying to remove white paint from my hands, using only my hands, after having worked with a live map-creation. 

The counter-mapping process that I engaged in involved using pieces of wood charcoal from trees felled in Mi’kma’ki to create an outline representing the physical space of Mi’kmaq territory, and then using white paint dropped at sites of early colonial settlement on this approximation of a map to outline and eventually erase the territory represented by the charcoal. Once this map had been completely encompassed and visually obliterated by the whiteness of the paint, I attempted to remove the paint from my hands, unsuccessfully. 

I am interested in working on more large-scale versions of this project, and continuing to explore the role of embodied colonizer/mapmaker/map-destroyer/culprit.