proposal for a participatory public art piece
Land, home, site, place, countermapping, public
April 2022

In the context of a housing crisis on stolen indigenous land, in a space that has seen a large amount of recent immigration, how can public, community counter-mapping allow for an exploration of the journeys we take away from our homes? 

This is a piece that responds to the concept of a situated home and where we can make a home, how we get from our homes to where we are, and what it means if we can’t return to our homes. Not yet enacted, this is a concept that could be put into action in future, or which may remain as an idea only. The piece involves a small, makeshift stand which clearly states that it is an art project.  Passers-by are invited to draw a map of how to get to their home from the site that the project is taking place on. These maps are (with permission) documented, and are then taken away with the audience members who drew them. The collected maps are then displayed on the outside of the Old Halifax Library as projections.

Working from this very particular local site in the settler-colonial city of Halifax (the Old Halifax Library grounds), in a place where the tensions between police and activists have been rising, in the midst of a housing crisis, and in a global society with refugee crises becoming more and more common, I want to create a safe and participatory way for audiences to think about what it means to have a site of home, or not. This message will be communicated through the combination of the prompt and the location and will likely resonate with each audience member slightly differently. In a world that has grown particularly polarized, I want this project to be welcoming to a large range of people, so that its message arrives sneakily, when you least expect it. I do not want it to directly look like an activist project, but it is an activist project.

The audience may or may not be aware of the context of the site and the issues surrounding it. The intended audience is truly the general public: after spending about a half hour on site during a visit in April 2022, I encountered children, adults, youth, seniors, people presenting as affluent, people presenting as less affluent, couples, individuals, groups, pets, people on bikes and scooters, people walking, people in motorized wheelchairs, birds, students, professionals, artists, friends, individuals, and generally people of a wide variety of backgrounds and at different stages in their lives. 

This proposed piece would have multiple potential audiences. There is the audience that will walk by the piece and notice it but not directly engage with it. There is the audience who will come up and ask questions but not participate. There is the audience who will participate directly in the project. There is the audience who will see the maps made by the participants as they bring them into their homes and lives (if they choose to do so). And there is the audience who will see the completed maps compiled on the side of the library, projected at night. I want to engage people as individuals, one-on-one, where people can participate to their level of comfort. They can see the piece and walk by, they can stop to ask a question, they can participate, they can do a final interview, they can allow their map to be documented or not, and they can follow along with where the project goes if they choose to be joining a mailing list. Each of these steps are optional and based on the audience member’s comfort level.

This is a site-specific piece that engages with several different political issues. Perhaps most visibly, the piece responds to the August 2020 Halifax Police battalion who pepper-sprayed, arrested, and forcibly removed peaceful protestors and took down a number of tents that unhoused people were living in on the site. Kjipuktuk/Halifax is currently in the midst of a housing crisis, with the city’s broken promises regarding support for unhoused people an ongoing and contentious issue. It also relates to issues of land use, privilege, displacement, settlement, colonization, diaspora, and varying notions of ‘home.’ The site is also the location of a Winston Churchill statue, which has raised some controversy in recent years, and is a reminder of the colonial state and its heroes. 

The library site is a very public space, and a thoroughfare for pedestrian activity. A sidewalk cuts diagonally across a lawn which is a former burial ground (Bogstie). Currently the space houses the Halifax Memorial Public Library, which opened in the 1950s and remained in use until 2014 when the new Central Library was opened. Currently there are several different proposals for the space. Humans walk, bike, and wheel along this walkway, which is cleared of snow in the winter. Often there will be people asking for change or support, and unhoused people hanging out in the area. It is a site where food trucks park for tourists to buy fish and chips at, and where various groups such as the Salvation Army serve meals to unhoused people and people in need. Religious groups sometimes use the area to proselytize and activist groups have sometimes used it as a protest spot. People eat their lunch there. There are benches. In the summer there are often buskers or street artists. There is a pole where local events can be posted. This site holds many things within its relatively small footprint. If this piece is to be undertaken it would likely shift to be responsive to the present moment.