countermap.land: Request for Expressions of Interest
October 8, 2021
221A, along with the national Artist Run Centre Association (ARCA), are pleased to support the Tkaronto chapter of The Architecture Lobby’s countermap.land. This crowd-sourced project locates tangible spaces and objects within the territory known as Canada, represented by figures and events – be they political, social, economic, or otherwise – that have contributed to the dispossession of life, memory, territory, and resources of BIPOC and Queer communities, both past and present. Through an open and participatory process facilitated online, the project opens dialogue around specific territories in question and allows for public feedback on the conditions of current monuments, public buildings and lands. Further, it seeks to explore new methods for repatriation and creative strategies for addressing real harm caused to BIPOC and Queer communities.
Spaces and objects that will be considered in this project range in a variety of scales in order to capture the pervasiveness of systemic racism. They include, but are not limited to: racist and colonial statues and places, communities displaced by urban renewal schemes, sites designed to suppress BIPOC and Queer communities, institutions who have relied on land grabs to accumulate their wealth, desecrated burial grounds, and places established through the dispossession of culturally-significant ecologies.
