SORCE Collective member Andrew Lochead and his collaborator Tricia Enns led participants on an exploration of trash and what we are to make of the remains left all around us. As we approached the park on a grey afternoon, participants stood in a circle getting to know one another and their walk leaders. A quick history was given of the area, including some aspects of the park that were hidden from view. The participants were able to discuss their immediate reception of the space before setting out, with little garbage bags in hand.
As we walked, we were invited to look around for material traces that had been left and that “lept out” at us. Each of the participants became entranced in the activity of finding treasures that had once been discarded, allowing for the vitality of these pieces to be transformed into something precious and desired. As we collected fragments into our bags, we began to show each other what we had found, looking at one another’s treasures with joy and even envy at the interesting garbage that was able to be discovered.
During one moment, a certain Portuguese cigarette package was revealed to have been photographed by one of the participants during another walk in the park earlier that week and we were able to reflect on the various encounters we have with discarded materials, them moving into and out of our fields of interest.
As we walked back to the activity room of a large condo complex, we were invited into a process of paper making, submerging our hands in water that had a suspension of paper fibers that were filtered through a screen. On these wet fibres, we were able to place our recovered debris which became embedded into the paper itself. Each participant was then able to take home their (somewhat dripping) paper which would cure overnight, revealing a made grouping of material traces that are held within the paper, making them into something new, a map of encounters relative to each participant.
The workshop was able to bring about new kinds of interactions with space to recontextualize discarded materials as having the potential for reinvention and perhaps reinvigoration.
See an example of one of the debris maps below:
The original call-out is preserved below:
10% of proceeds will be donated to Toronto Council Fire and the Ontario Black History Society.
Join artists and creative researchers Tricia Enns (Tioht:àke/Montréal) and Andrew Lochhead (Tkaronto/Toronto) for a two-hour workshop of walking and “map” making using debris and handmade paper techniques that explores, issues of urban space, waste, memory and the politics of place through a participation-based approach.
Collect debris while walking and learning the stories of what is now called Trinity-Bellwoods Park, Garrison Creek, and nearby Dundas Street and how these discarded objects, like the land they are found on, connect to historic global trajectories of power that reverberate through our present day.
Learn how to make paper out of recycled material, incorporate your debris, to create an alternative map, highlighting spatial narratives and stories rather than roads and ownership boundaries, that shares your walking journey, and visually orientates your relationships to where, who, and what you walked along with.
This workshop has 15 available spaces, and is offered on a sliding scale to cover artistic labour, research time and materials, with a minimum suggestion of $20-$40//pp. Payable in cash on the day of the workshop or on the eventbrite page. 10% of funds raised will be donated to Toronto Council Fire and the Ontario Black History Society.