Creative Cartography and Community Projects
My mapping art practice is community based. For years I have been working with people to map their personal connection with the environment, and more notably with urban nature. I am interested in breaking down the nature/culture dichotomy, and I find personal maps a perfect medium for doing that.
“Maps hold a magic that is anything but technical. Maps are a human attempt to represent the incredible complexities of time and space. They are shorthand for perceptions that each of us create. A map becomes more than a series of lines; it becomes an agenda for action, a turf to defend, a series of memories that remind of action and pleasure and history. Maps have been made that inflame war and hatred. Maps have been made that create new visions of human society.”
“Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment”, edited by Doug Aberley
Wild City Mapping - www.wildcitymapping.org
I am the founder of the Wild City Mapping collective. The other two members of the collective are Dominique Ferraton and Marilene Gaudet. Our mission is to creatively map wild green spaces in Montreal through the eyes of the citizens who use them. We focus in particular on unofficial parks, abandoned lots and undeveloped land where vegetation grows freely. These spaces are often grayed out on city maps, but through our work, we highlight them as vibrant areas of social and ecological significance.
We developed an online map, to which people submit wild urban spaces that hold special meaning to them.
We also create hand drawn maps of wild spaces, many of which have been featured in our exhibitions.
We hold various artistic interventions in the wild green spaces to bring attention to them: yarn bombing, installations, interpretive walks, film screenings and more.
In summer 2022, we had a retrospective exhibition showing our creative work inspired by wild nature alongside community submissions from the last 8 years.
I know a place…
This is a locative media project created during an artist residency at the Banff New Media Institute in 2008. People were given a kit with instructions and locative devices. They were supposed to choose a place that is significant to them and were supposed to go there and make a report about it using the locative devices. Their submission was sent to a map.
