0:00

joining us um and if you’re trickling in um welcome as you come um

0:06

i’m just gonna open our spaces the land acknowledgement before we get to um and then i’ll share this

0:12

space back to jesse and he’ll introduce the lovely cohort of fellows that we have with us

0:17

today um so i’ll just get started tutu 1a is based on the unseated territories of

0:23

the musqueam squamish and swayo tooth nations the organization is made up of individuals that are respectful but

0:30

uninvited guests some of us were born here some of us come from lands of tall prairie grasses

0:37

some of us come from opposing shorelines and some of us from far off distances as individuals we can recognize our own

0:44

responsibilities to be honest in the ways we enact care upon the land and to remind each other to tread lightly

0:50

as we direct ourselves and each other forward as we forge new paths and look back to ensure those carrying along with

0:57

us have the means to navigate at their own paces constantly we look with deep inspiration

1:03

to the rhizomatic work of houshui new growth to slow ourselves to a pacing

1:08

resemblance of trust building as we continue to realize the possible potentials tethered to interconnectedness

1:15

this is the place where salty waves meet the shore where the trees are so thick you need many arms to embrace them

1:21

where the rivers and streams bring sustenance to the deep root systems where the boulders and pebbles remind us

1:27

of the mountains they broke away from where the clouds hang low and make the softest light

1:32

where the snow only kisses the highest peaks where the buds turn to blossom so early

1:37

where the leaves form canopies we commit ourselves as individuals within an organization to conceive of labor

1:44

existing in ways external to linear time to remind ourselves of the ones who came before us

1:50

and to be diligent in the ways we tenderly hold space for those to come for those to rise up for those

1:56

fatigued and for those determined by the rigor of resistance and the softness of resilience i’ll

2:03

um yeah sorry mine i didn’t say my name my name is nicole kelly westman i’m the education and learning programmer

2:09

um at 221a um so i’m really excited that we have this opportunity to um gather together and introduce the

2:15

feathers and um i’ll just hand it over to jesse who’s maybe over this way over there

2:23

thank you nicole for that generous like poetic um welcoming and introduction and setting the tone for our event today

2:29

and keeping the land um front and center um my name is jesse mckee and i’m the head of strategy at 22na and my role is

2:37

responsible for leading the organization’s programming research communications and advancement um i’m really pleased to welcome you to

2:43

this introduction to our fellowship program this year so thanks for sharing your time with us to learn more about the research and

2:48

ideas that our fellows are developing um for those who are joining us and are new to 221a we’re

2:54

a non-profit organization that works with artists and designers to research and develop social cultural and ecological infrastructure

3:00

as a charitable society we envision a pluralistic society where all people have the means to make and

3:06

access culture i’d like to take a moment to share with you a sketch of 2218’s programming model

3:13

and fellowship program 221a operates not so much as a presenting organization but rather through a research and

3:19

infrastructure model so unlike an exhibition model for a visual art design organization tutuna’s operating model supports

3:25

cultural workers over extended periods to lead the organization’s pursuits engaging deeply with context

3:31

collaborator collaborators ideas audiences with a focus on the development of research that leads to

3:36

new social cultural and ecological infrastructure since 2018 when we pivoted to this

3:41

operating model 22na has worked with 11 fellows to conduct research over periods of three to 24 months each

3:48

and they receive a living wage stipend to lead new research on potential social cultural and ecological infrastructure

3:54

while staff like me nicole kelly westman and tao faye who’s our technical

4:00

operator today for this webinar um and she works as a program producer we work alongside the fellows to

4:05

resource and translate research into public education learning programs and plans to develop

4:10

new infrastructure into the future so today we’ll hear from our fellows who will present their research projects

4:16

which we’re still feeling like we’ve just left the starting point of so consider today a look ahead to what’s grounding our

4:22

programming this year thankfully land territory and ecology seem to be a common thread amongst the projects

4:28

and we’ll also hear about the ways that digital technology and territory are converging um in perhaps more socialized and

4:35

ecological ways unlike the ways we experience in the 20th century with industry med territory

4:41

so this advancement of digital technology over land property um energy production can can open up new

4:48

forms of rights and access agreements that have different forms of governance that are seated kind of in people power so

4:55

the stacking and layering of the land is nothing new for the digital space so since the tech industry’s origins land

5:01

has always been intrinsic to the identity of functioning so just think of silicon valley in california the silicon prairies in texas

5:09

and now we have crypto valley in switzerland at the same time land and territory have

5:14

become one of the central focuses of cultural praxis being tied to both ecological movements and anti-colonial momentum

5:21

this invites the cultural worker to bring their theoretical learning cultural research and discursive practices to contribute to

5:27

multidisciplinary renegotiations between the ever complexifying forms of relationships

5:33

between humans and non-humans in the world and we need major structural reorganizing

5:39

in these relationships um accelerating emergencies and contingencies in this 21st century

5:44

namely automation and global heating um a few nodes of order um you’ll notice

5:50

as an audience member you’ll have your cameras off for this event so please relax and do as you would at this time of day where you are

5:56

i hope you may be enjoying a snack having a tea or maybe folding laundry that’s what i found myself often doing

6:01

throughout the pandemic when i’m listening to presentations and conferences each of our fellows will present their

6:06

research for about 10 to 15 minutes each we’ll have some discussion time afterwards amongst the presenters i’m

6:11

super keen for this portion this is the first time our fellows will have had the time to meet and discuss their work with each other

6:17

um then we’ll open the questions from the audience so please post your questions in the q a window and then you can use the chat window

6:24

which is a separate thing to communicate amongst yourselves and share links ideas and the like so without further ado i’d

6:31

like to introduce you to our first presenter christina battle who’s an artist who resides in edmonton

6:37

and in cree this territory is known as amiskwasi uh

6:43

and she holds a bachelor of science with specialization in environmental biology from the university of alberta a

6:49

certificate in film studies from ryerson university an mfa from the san francisco art institute and a phd

6:55

in art and visual culture from the university of western ontario i don’t usually read through academic accolades but for christine because she

7:01

has such a broad scope of knowledge and training i thought it was important to include that there

7:06

um her research and artistic work consider the parameters of disaster looking into it as action

7:12

as more than mere event and instead as a framework operating within larger systems of power through this research she imagines how

7:18

disaster could be utilized as a tactic for social change and as a tool for reimagining how dominant systems might radically shift

7:25

i’ll also mention christina has a current exhibition ongoing at the mckenzie gallery so check out their website for further

7:30

details on her connecting through grass’s project christina i’ll pass it over to you now

7:38

thank you so much um i’m gonna try to talk while i share my screen but um thanks to 221a and to tao and nicole and

7:46

jesse for um creating this space and this amazing opportunity also today just to speak

7:52

more with one another and get to know more about one another’s works and where we’re coming from

7:59

um it has been such an amazing pleasure to work with all of you so far so i’m really looking forward

8:05

um to continuing that through this new like super wild weird year that we’re

8:12

having um all right so i’m gonna introduce a little bit about where i’m coming from

8:17

a little bit about where i’m thinking of going with this research project um as jessie mentioned um at least for

8:24

me and i’m sure for others as well this features research is still just in the mode of taking shape so

8:30

um i’m going to give you sort of like a broad view of where what it looks like so i’m hoping you can

8:35

see a screen that’s trying to point toward reminding you to take care during these times um

8:44

so as jessie uh introduced i’m in amazuachi was kai khan in 3d6 territory

8:51

which is also known as edmonton alberta the ancestral and traditional territory of the plains the wood cree

8:57

the dene blackfoot soto nakota sioux and metis um amma scotchin sits in the aspen

9:03

partly parkland which is the transition zone between prairie where a prairie and forest meet

9:10

my research for 221a looks closer to systems of exchange seeking to move beyond capitalism’s

9:16

built-in cycles of breakdown i’m looking to strategies of trade utilized by plants and seen across

9:22

online systems to imagine alternative systems of exchange

9:28

and my research and practice things deeply about the concept of disaster and has for quite some time now and i’ve

9:35

been trying to think lately about how to express what it feels like to um

9:40

have been sitting with this idea and this concept of disaster for so long um and to be engaged with it so deeply

9:46

while also going through some pretty big uh collective crises right now and i thought this fire mean

9:52

made sense as a visual representation of this feeling it’s become of internet part of internet

9:57

language now so i’m sort of assuming that you’ve come across it or seen it um but just so that we’re all sort of

10:03

reading it in the same way it usually is used to help indicate a sort of deliberate ignorance

10:08

to the show unfolding all around you in a way that also recognizes that one does in fact know

10:13

and is actually quite aware of the show but is either deliberately ignoring it or perhaps helpless

10:18

unable to really do much about it but i was thinking about this line of

10:26

text this is fine and thinking perhaps that perhaps this is a

10:32

better appropriate description of the feeling um i’d like to be better able to express

10:38

right now um i think the font is probably a little tiny on your own so i’m going to read through it

10:43

um when you’ve been studying and thinking about crisis for so long and then plunged into crisis on a number

10:49

of fronts and it’s exactly how you figured it’d be but it but you also see a lot of good and care bubbling up

10:55

and want to focus on that and prioritize it and support it but both your parents have been really sick

11:01

and your work is all precarious so you take on a lot in fear of not knowing when you’ll get paid next and there’s a pandemic going on and your

11:07

government is taking advantage of the moment by ushering in super austere and disempowering policy

11:12

like cutting health care and green lighting open pit coal mines and giving bailouts to extractive exploitative

11:18

dying industries and oh yeah they took your parents pension and white supremacists are trying to overtake the us government and their

11:25

supporters are on the rise in this country too and you wish you could just sit and reflect on all this and what it means

11:31

but you’re constantly in response mode which basically feels like sitting in a room that is burning up in flames all around you

11:37

but it’s fine because at the end of it you know that a lot of good will come from the shifts that are bound

11:42

to happen because the system we’ve all been living through all this time is complete and

11:47

there is no way for it in the future but collapse so i also want to say that i wrote that a few days ago and i feel like things

11:54

have already shifted like in ways but maybe we can continue talking about a little

12:00

later on today so i’ve come back to this tweet um from naomi klein a number of times

12:07

it’s from back at the start of the at the start of the pandemic um first being on the radar at least in this country

12:13

and she points to one of the main concerns at the center of my research which is to look at the complexity of disaster as a

12:18

framework especially its relation to overarching systems like capitalism white supremacy and neoliberalism and

12:25

recognizing that these things very much overlap with one another in this tweet she speaks to some of this

12:30

overlap and the intersections of the environmental economic social and political and if you’ve been following um this

12:36

whole saga regarding the keystone pipeline has gotten even more ridiculous in the last couple of days

12:43

so i’m sure a conversation around that two days from now will be entirely different again

12:50

so this is an example of one of the ways i’ve approached this complexity recently an essay that i wrote where i was

12:56

thinking through both collective memory and forgetting and about what it means to be caught in the neoliberal loop

13:04

the labor issues that i was revisiting in the essay from 1986 connect quite directly to those that

13:09

we’re seeing now made more visible across the pandemic and numerous sectors of the workforce

13:14

and these are um in regard to a meatpacking plant here in alberta that has made headlines since the spring

13:26

in my spending time thinking about the complexity at work across disaster i’m interested in looking to other

13:32

models and systems for comparison and overlap and for strategies of considering it otherwise

13:38

one of the places where i look for systems of overlap is to technology to satellite technology and tools for mapping to the internet especially

13:45

social media and the ways that we engage with these complex systems as well as how we come to know

13:50

experience and reflect on disaster through them

13:56

i think about social media a lot and about our relationship to these public spaces that are wholly owned and

14:01

operated by billionaires making continual profit off of our most intimate moments and struggles

14:07

my work is especially interested in situating conversation at its center and in thinking about its role within

14:13

community and publics and how it operates and especially how it adapts based on online technology

14:18

and i just thought i’d throw this recent tweet up there um from jack dorsey uh because it’s been on my mind a lot uh

14:24

this last few days since it was tweeted and i find it quite fascinating especially the disconnect within it this

14:32

idea of a corporation dominate dominating the public square and the role in shaping and setting the guidelines for public discourse and

14:38

conversation i think we live in really interesting times right now um that i feel really

14:44

lucky to be spending time thinking about more deeply

14:50

one of the other places i look to for systems and strategies to learn from is to plant systems and i’ve learned a

14:57

lot from this ongoing seed saving project that i have called seeds are meant to disperse the

15:02

seeds are offered as barter or gift and the project hopes to draw attention to issues related to food security and

15:08

sustainability species diversification seed copyright climate change

15:13

urban renewal and anti-capitalist forms of exchange i look to both plant systems and systems

15:18

of technology to think more about notions of spread

15:24

and one goal of the seed saving project is to engage with the notion of spread by disseminating ideas outward from the

15:30

garden as a form of community building and one of the ways that i approach the complexity of disaster is a focus on

15:36

looking at community and the ways that individuals come together in times of crisis as well as the movement between online

15:42

and offline spaces

15:49

for imagining new systems of exchange so this research that i’m thinking about and working through

15:54

with 221a i’m taking time to think more deeply about and develop a

16:00

publication surrounding this overall research and i come to define publication by pulling from matthew stadler via

16:06

publication studios approach to publication as a political strategy that constructs a public

16:12

and extends beyond the written page and so this new work will take on a number of forms

16:18

a series of conversations where i learn from and collaborate with others a living research document that extends

16:23

research and ideas on two others and a participatory project that engages with publics

16:29

and shifts responsibility of performance from onto participants themselves which will later then be folded back

16:36

into the overall research um and this slide is taken from the first conversation that is in the

16:42

process of being developed for this research which i’m calling the forecast um i’ve

16:47

been thinking a lot about what is necessary in order to shape collaborative and engaged conversation that has the

16:53

potential to collectively result in the development of new models and systems situated around forms of exchange

17:01

um so i’ve just repeated this sort of primary question that we’ll be engaging with as a small group

17:07

collaborating together and thinking through some of these connections across planet systems online spaces and um

17:13

economic models and how we might move beyond capitalism’s built-in cycles of breakdown

17:23

and then finally this research will be utilized to develop a framework for a larger participatory project

17:28

that thinks more specifically about 221a’s semi-public space

17:34

and again thinking about this balance between working collectively online and how that might engage with offline spaces

17:45

thanks that’s it i’m really looking forward to [Music] our conversation and any questions that

17:51

folks have as well great thank you so much christina

17:58

i’m just gonna go back up to my notes to introduce you to um doma our next presenter um

18:04

doma is a non-profit organization um that proposes a smart contract-based community housing system in order

18:11

to produce more equitable conditions for urban living doma is a platform for network scale

18:17

leveraged home ownership and distributed governance so presenting their project today will be maxine

18:23

rockmanico who’s calling in from kiev ukraine and maxime is an architect designer and

18:29

entrepreneur his research and design work explores new forms of urban living enabled by emerging technologies

18:34

he’s the founder of the architectural practice and architects one word in kiev and he’s a partner at the center

18:41

for spatial technologies also in kiev so next scene i’ll pass it over to you

18:47

thank you jesse um but now you can you should be able to see my screen and

18:54

obviously first of all i would like to say big thank you to 21a and uh tao jesse

19:01

and nicole has been really fantastic and it’s only the start so i’m going to talk a bit about this um

19:08

project which is called doma and um it is a very collective project

19:13

in nature a collaborative project that um kind of i should acknowledge um many other people who uh worked on it

19:20

francesco serbergondi is not here with me today but um he’s a active part of the project also

19:27

the team of the center for special technologies my colleagues at stroke institute with when we started the

19:33

project um i mean the the basic um premise of the

19:38

project is kind of revolving around this kind of concept of housing crisis which

19:44

may manifest differently in different places uh in the world but um the patterns are kind of similar

19:51

everywhere you go all around the world an increasing percentage of people are priced out of real estate markets with

19:58

no prospect of ever owning a home and capital income especially if you count

20:04

housing is displacing labor income uh with this kind of rise of housing

20:09

prices housing became the world’s biggest asset class which kind of puts this issue of

20:16

affordability into the epicenter of many different disciplines and myself as an architect i’ve been

20:23

really focusing on issues of sustainable affordable housing for a while

20:28

and i took place took part in many architecture competitions that kind of look into that issue

20:34

but at some point it started to feel like architecture is not the

20:41

not the medium of how you can address this issue in the most kind of scalable way

20:47

so um with doma we kind of think about this um

20:52

way instead of designing the kind of physical objects in the city to try to

21:00

think about how to figure out how can we change things around circuits

21:05

of value that are attached to homes and we envision doma as an urban software that

21:12

kind of connects people and residential spaces in a different way

21:18

in a way that is based on kind of collaboration and collective ownership so the way it works is um there are two

21:26

basic principles that we kind of um have in the core of doma first one is tokenization and the

21:33

idea of tech tokenization is that each property is split into micro parts which are shared between the

21:41

people who bought them and by by doing this we kind of are trying

21:46

to give access to property market in a way that like you know uh big financial institutions

21:53

have access to it to store value to uh with a much reduced threshold of entry so

22:00

everyone can invest small amounts into into housing basically and the second idea is that people who

22:07

dwell in the apartments because there is this kind of fractionalized asset which is a doma token they would

22:14

kind of also be able to generate shares of equity in the domain platform the more they live in an apartment so it

22:21

always felt to me like there is something very unfair about paying rent for 20 years and you know

22:27

having zero ownership in a place you rent and with doma the idea is that

22:32

naturally by bringing value into the platform you’re also a kind of benefited for that and we we

22:40

are kind of prototyping different models to do that obviously god is in detail so there is a

22:45

lot of conversation about these kinds of paybacks and how quickly one can

22:50

generate equity and what is fair and what is valuable but um the basic idea is to just

22:58

augment a good old cooperative model with um technology contemporary things like

23:05

blockchain and like platforms so we think about ways to enable multitude of people to

23:13

get together and coordinate even if they don’t know each other which is a big problem for for current

23:19

cooperatives to scale right so often based on local communities that are

23:24

kind of um there’s a limit to the scale they can reach and um in that sense

23:32

the kind of idea of the project is also to turn housing something into somehow into

23:39

commons so with doma the community of stakeholders collectively owns the portfolio of

23:44

properties and it’s a step away from the traditional one family one house relationship

23:52

to the home which is basically again for us it’s a step towards kind of

23:58

establishing housing as commons so doma facilitates the emergence of these kinds of new

24:03

models of urban living sharing organizing and caring that fits the diversity of today’s city

24:12

and what you see what you heard by now is kind of a presentation that we

24:17

went through um we went to different places mostly in europe and presented it um in many different

24:24

cities and um i’m going to talk a bit about where it’s going towards with 21a

24:32

uh and uh one thing uh is that is important to say is that um doma was first thought for uh

24:40

the context of ukrainian cities uh in ukraine uh mortgages are extremely

24:46

expensive as a percentage of income there’s they’re absolutely like these are all ukrainian cities there it’s absolutely

24:53

unprecedented kind of uh price therefore almost um only two

24:58

percent of property transactions are happening with uh with the help of financial instruments such

25:04

as mortgage most of people need to borrow from friends they you know um

25:10

collect money in cash and so it’s all quite messy uh another parameter that we’re looking is

25:16

this kind of uh price to rent ratio right how many years you need to rent

25:22

such that you would pay for rent um as much money as you would to buy that

25:28

flat right so um these parameters are key to what we do right because when we are invited

25:34

to copenhagen we understand that the kind of the solutions there the the

25:40

kind of diagnosis of a housing crisis there should differ from this context and um

25:48

uh in 2019 we were invited for this uh to participate in this major show

25:54

which was meant to be at philadelphia museum of art walker art center and art institute in chicago in the u.s and

26:02

um we were kind of invited to present doma and to think about these kinds of

26:07

almost like implications of something like doma and for that project we started to

26:13

collaborate with francis sang which who is a new york based programmer and

26:19

what we started to do is we started to model certain cities for this kind of game which you can

26:25

access at play.city we kind of started to

26:32

embed certain parameters that are kind of key to understand certain cities

26:38

for instance this is a little model of philadelphia where the first show was meant to be

26:43

uh meant to take place you know the the exhibitions um were canceled because of the virus but

26:49

um the kind of um nature of how francis works with is also

26:54

uh has to do with this kind of agent uh behavior modeling so he kind of uh tried to encode certain

27:01

behaviors that each of these agents kind of have and the

27:06

um core idea here is to try to uh get into the core of why there’s uh

27:12

this uh divide between homeownership and there’s there’s always seems to be a

27:19

conflict uh that kind of um is quite hard to tackle and with with the philadelphia we started to

27:26

build this model and at the same time we also did this project with the office which i ran which is called the

27:32

center for special technologies and it was done in collaboration with dark matter labs where

27:38

we looked at this beautiful park in manhattan which is called highline

27:43

and we looked at the gentrific side of things right we all know that it’s uh i mean i don’t

27:49

know especially in architecture and landscape architecture kind of world it’s like a landmark a celebrated project

27:57

but we also looked at how it affected property prices on manhattan and how it kind of became

28:02

this engine of values around this park uh kind of skyrocketing to the

28:08

point where like people had their properties rising to 300

28:14

and we also thought about why that happens and how that works right when public investment

28:19

is kind of poured into a certain urban context and that leads to the fact that um kind

28:25

of we all together pay taxes build some sort of public infrastructure but then private individuals

28:31

benefit from it and those are not the individuals who are the least kind of already happy and have access to

28:39

things so this is where we come to vancouver and um you know in ukraine we we know

28:46

vancouver is this kind of um vogue stop a livability city in the world

28:52

um we were very lucky to visit um jesse and the team in vancouver and

28:58

we kind of had a bit of um [Music] chance to see how how things work in

29:04

terms of um also housing issue so vancouver is very interesting for us in

29:10

many regards and the project that we are trying to um kind of set up right

29:16

here you already can see the first results where we try to put all the data from

29:22

in this case public um office which collects taxes from properties

29:27

um they uh evaluate property prices and you can see the dynamic of property

29:32

prices changing from 2006 till now and the idea is to kind of to

29:38

try to build this dashboard of housing crisis right all of these things

29:43

that we’ve worked with in different places we kind of would like to bring them into

29:48

something systematic and also share it with all of the interesting people who are also asking for these things so

29:55

um what we’re trying to figure out is how can we put together this kind of key parameters that best

30:01

describe housing crisis almost in a way that would hint at possible solutions in

30:07

the same way is when i’m saying that if in kiev there is no access to mortgage

30:13

and properties are around like properties are very cheap compared to rent

30:19

that kind of state of housing market makes you think about this kind of collective ownership pulling resources

30:26

together collectively buying some properties that seemed obvious to us when we studied the very detail of

30:33

housing market here the same kind of um thing we hope to achieve with cities

30:40

that we know much worse than our home city and that’s why we’re building this tool with the

30:45

help of 221a and hopefully yeah in the end of this fellowship we’ll have a chance to

30:51

share with you what we found out through this process very much looking forward to talk about um

30:56

our projects with the diverse group very interested to see where the intersections are and big

31:02

thanks for having us uh today um jesse i handed you the mic thank you

31:12

great thank you maxine um it’s great the mat we looked at the map i think on monday

31:17

morning and it’s already kind of evolved so much so your team’s been very busy this week um congratulations awesome and finally

31:25

yeah who was uh who spent some some nights over thank you guy mom um so finally our

31:32

third presenter today is zasha kola and zasha is a curator who co-founded the research collaborative

31:38

black rice and tuna sang nagaland in 2007 and she was the co-founder of the

31:44

curatorial collaborative union of artists and art space clark house initiative in bombay

31:50

her art writing and curatorial research turns around contemporary art in indo-burma and myanmar

31:55

since the late 1980s and zasha teaches comparative curatorial theory in the master of visual arts and

32:01

curatorial studies at the new academy of fine art in milan she lives and works between

32:07

india and italy and i believe she’s calling in from home in turin this morning so sasha i’ll pass

32:14

the platform over to you thank you thank you so much and what

32:21

lovely presentations um i’m so

32:27

so happy to you know be able to share um and it i was very lucky to be able to

32:34

visit all of you at two to one a and get a feeling of the space uh some years ago now um

32:42

so to tell nicole and jesse thank you to the audience as well thanks for

32:47

joining us and these lovely participants on this panel

32:52

um okay let me share my screen

32:58

can you let me know if uh

33:05

and i think you see it with the side panel

33:16

is that better now okay so i um i decided to call this scorched

33:25

earthly and uh this kind of fellowship and it comes from the very early work

33:32

that jesse mentioned in 2007 and eight where i was spending a lot of time

33:38

in a part of india called the northeast a very weird name but it consists of

33:44

many different states and two of the states i was particularly interested in was manipur and nagaland

33:50

and they are border areas with china bangladesh myanmar and and

33:58

for this reason are a really uh terrorized part of india and somehow

34:06

compared to kashmir far less researched and far less present within the indian imagination

34:12

which was a starting point for me this is just a quote i took from a book

34:20

on um at that time when it was published it was a 52-year history of a kind of

34:28

i wouldn’t call it a civil war but perhaps that’s the best word for it

34:33

and it goes as long as the one between israel and palestine and um and the sentence that i came

34:40

across years ago was has always stayed with me as maybe as the starting point for a project like

34:47

this which um which is you know it was beyond our imagination that the indian armed forces

34:53

would go to the extent of committing the scorched earth policy so barbarously all over nagaland nothing

34:59

was left unburned all the valuable jungle wealth has been destroyed um

35:05

so if i can read a little bit uh

35:11

you know prolonged military’s presence shows up to me images of destruction implies the

35:16

brutalization of populations also through the legalized brutalization of their lands

35:22

the northeast also had aerial bombing [Music] you know to curb sedition

35:28

and what i need to mention is that it’s also an area very high in forest land

35:34

biodiversity and um and various ethnicities various peoples

35:42

um it tends to be represented as a place of insurgency

35:49

successionist violence that threatens the indian democracy and um

35:56

and the art of nagaland tends to be framed as handicraft or artifacts of ethnography

36:02

uh and visual anthropology we’re not told of how the indian army burned

36:08

860 villages and granaries in nagaland how to smoke out insurgents the army

36:14

burned the forests and how when the villagers returned they had to cultivate the bitter poisonous fields um

36:23

so i think um i think i need to also say that

36:29

anthropology um has a strange connection with

36:35

colonialism especially in this part of the world but you know anthropology couldn’t have

36:41

happened without the whole colonial uh practice and uh

36:46

abraham lothar has written a fantastic book on this and started a very different

36:52

kind of living museum with contemporary artists and

36:57

and it really goes against this kind of anthropological view

37:02

um i pulled out this image actually it was

37:09

sent to me while i was explaining this project to the artist nalini milani

37:14

i don’t know how many of you know her and um she sent me an article about ikosa

37:21

and its history and this might this is a story from the mahabharata

37:26

an epic in india and uh um so it talks about the burning of a

37:32

kandava forest the killing of all its fauna the birds the species

37:38

of the lakes and the ponds when the water boiled it goes into great detail about how

37:44

everything had to die uh it was carried out by a hero and that’s what makes this really

37:50

unusual in indian mythology also by arjuna and a god krishna

37:57

and they were clearing out warrior serpent tribes the original

38:03

inhabitants of the forest and these people were displaced um indra the king of the gods

38:12

uh who was himself the protector of this forest but he was defeated by these two heroes

38:18

and the entire forest was burnt and krishna and arjun these two one hero one god uh they set up a new palace

38:26

and they call it indra prashta after indra the the god who tried to protect and

38:32

save the forest um and it’s an early record of ecocide i

38:39

think in our contemporary eyes and probably described very real events uh

38:47

or a whole history of events from three thousand years ago and before um and it’s a it’s

38:54

it’s around this this forest was most likely um around the current capital of delhi

39:01

in the indogangetic plain which was very rich in forest land and was slowly cleared

39:07

for agriculture um and uh

39:14

you have the same story depicted also in cambodia

39:19

uh in angkor here you see the serpent uh figures as well who were burnt

39:26

displaced uh just just to make it not only an indian story i mean i also

39:33

thought about gilgamesh there’s a story um um there’s a tablet

39:39

tablet five of the gilgamesh which says my friend we’ve cut down the towering

39:44

sedder whose top scrapes the sky so this was a seder forest a sacred set of forest

39:51

make from it a door 72 cubits high 24 cubits wide one cubit thick it’s

39:57

fixed to its lower and upper pivots will be out of one piece let them carry it to new pool

40:03

the euphrates will carry it down nepal will rejoice so uh it’s about the murder of the

40:09

guardian of the sacred set of forest um uh where the gods lived

40:15

and um and again it was to haul off the timber that they cut that

40:21

the hero again cuts to take it to mesopotamia to build a palace

40:27

so um i these are images of the amazon

40:34

forests and that’s not surprising it’s both from 2020 and this

40:40

is um from 2017 this is in myanmar and

40:48

this is an image of burnings these are also satellite images but uh you see this is 27th

40:55

august and this is 11 september and here the burning is um we’re looking at the genocide we’re

41:02

looking at satellite images of what a genocide looks like where a village this image

41:07

comes from amnesty international um

41:13

and and this is their caption before and after imagery shows how the rohingya

41:19

areas of indian the village were destroyed while nearby areas of other ethnicities were left unscathed

41:28

and so i i know i’m trying to put many

41:34

geographies uh together i’m thinking about canada i’m thinking about the landscape

41:41

of this area between india and myanmar

41:46

um and yet you know and this seems to imply some kind of universal

41:53

idea and i’m not yet ready to call this earthly i think it’s a bit dystopian and

42:00

uh and that’s where the scorched earthly comes uh it comes becomes useful to me it’s a

42:06

kind of universalism that we all share or are sharing uh that

42:12

uh uh that that is off uh you know these these

42:18

geographies as well um and it’s a kind of grounding method i guess that i will

42:25

use for the fellowship um so i also want to see where it can go and how to link uh

42:32

disappearance the the forcible and legal removal of

42:37

people with the way we treat landscape how these things are no longer separable

42:45

how they’ve become the same thing which is something i was looking at in 2007 but it’s just become

42:53

far more obvious uh as we speak today so um again

43:00

i’ll just read a little bit the legal provision for scorched earth logic in militarized areas allows me to connect

43:07

in an immediate way with geography as terrain without situating the research within geography is contained by

43:13

national sovereign borders the capitalist extractivism that began

43:19

in the period of british imperialism its long period of social and cultural isolation we’re still looking at indian

43:26

after a scorched earth military campaign um

43:34

and i could go into the you know i could go into the history of this but i don’t

43:39

have time but i would just like to talk about some of the scorched earth tactics as the mark as i’ve written them so

43:47

burning villages planting landmines ethnic cleansing that are underway in

43:54

in this area um ethnic cleansing forced labor forced relocation of villages and

44:00

farms destruction of houses arrests without charge using civilians as slave labor

44:05

and as mine sweeps the revocation of citizenship and pushing into statelessness of

44:11

indigenous populations the rape and murder of women corruption extortion

44:16

extrajudicial killings mass graves this is myanmar uh and it’s a list

44:24

of uh you know what happened there and this is an artist who’s

44:29

actually a canadian artist but who is um grew up in the forests of

44:34

myanmar as in exile against the military dictatorship savang wong se yongwei he’s actually

44:42

uh i think came to vancouver at the age of 12 and has lived there ever since and these are

44:50

his works on that he recreates certain uh mass

44:58

this one is called indian but he also is the one who shared this image with me

45:04

and has uh made a kind of abstract work on that and this is on jade mining um where he looks at the

45:12

north of myanmar a place called hapkanth which has seen maybe it came in the news

45:19

a year ago for a flood that uh lost several lives but it again it’s it’s um

45:26

maybe i have a it was a long kind of scroll and so something i’m interested in doing

45:33

with this research is looking at um kind of the poems the woven

45:40

traditions and see you know how these things uh interconnect

45:45

i also you know want to say what’s happening on the other side of the border

45:50

in india for example we have the foreigners tribunal order

45:58

to bring the whole country on the foreigner tribunal and this is from the ministry of home

46:03

affairs and at first it was unique to the state of hassan this area in the northeast where people without

46:10

citizenship papers in a country where this is commonplace have been placed in prison-based

46:15

detention camps but they now trying to extend this to the whole country and the armed forces

46:20

special powers act there’s a really tremendous law uh in enforced in nagaland and manipur for

46:28

decades that in a blanket way legalizes the destruction of forests to root out

46:35

militants the burning of granaries the burning of fields as a form of punishment to villages suspected of sympathizing with

46:42

medicines similarly in myanmar the army has used an area of scotch

46:47

tactics and

46:53

i can unfortunately go on but uh just to think of the other

46:59

bordering area we can’t forget the what’s happening with the uyghur

47:05

right now in china so i i know it sounds like a list but

47:10

um it’s just how um how actually these three countries

47:16

seem to have very and canada let’s include have very different political one is

47:22

an ex or almost quasi military dictatorship one is supposedly a democracy

47:27

uh and one is uh i don’t know a communist capitalist

47:34

system and how actually they they all using this uh idea of a camp of

47:41

of uh um they all have like uh

47:48

interesting uses of the law to carry out scorched earth even even today so um yeah somehow i’m

47:56

looking at voices that of course confront this and they happen to do so through weavings through poems

48:03

and this is uh something i’m looking into in the project

48:14

maybe i say one last thing is that i’m also looking at these figures

48:19

who are this is gaiden liu but i’m looking at somebody in myanmar uh who’s related to someone uh

48:27

called the mahadevi yongwei she led an army so did gaiden liu and

48:34

also this lady called the black priestess all these ladies these kind of spirit presences or priestesses

48:41

or demigods and they why did you know and so it sounds a bit strange to talk

48:47

about these practices in a in a kind of political

48:52

way but they were using this idea of magic sorcery uh kind of embracing the witch

49:00

uh as a political weapon and trying to um

49:07

really win back from the legality of colonialism this kind of fake legality

49:12

of the paper and the law trying to win back so this was you know a freedom fighter from the 1930s

49:19

running guiding lieu but also trying to win back from the community agrarian reform

49:26

and uh so i’m looking into these figures these women uh but also others who who

49:33

used this um aesthetic or this this mad idea of magic to talk back to

49:42

um uh the law or to confront the law or to create

49:48

changes that they couldn’t have done through political change because as women often they were not really given space

49:55

for that

50:02

okay thank you sasha that was um good i’m so excited to continue to do this

50:08

work with you and find other connection points and find other ways to tell these stories um

50:13

across the borders and as we’re kind of isolated in very much local places these days without the

50:20

ability to travel that much um so maybe that could be like maybe our first

50:26

common question to kind of talk about but especially given this year and how hyper

50:32

local we’ve been and how limited we have in terms of our

50:37

perspective coming through the screen or coming through narratives from other people that we are connected to and

50:43

sharing stories with us how do you approach um working with the territories in the way

50:48

that you do and thinking through the life of these territories um through this kind of simulation and the

50:56

real um and that could both be through a technological lens but also maybe for zasha for you the simulation of history

51:03

and disciplines like anthropology um and how do you negotiate those

51:08

boundaries sasha do you want to go first

51:17

i don’t know if i have a good answer because i feel like we do learning every day on how to

51:24

negotiate that i remember feeling really um at last in a way on how to start

51:31

sometimes and so uh however um

51:37

i i think we still create very local um networks and thankfully uh there’s so

51:45

much support from two to one a and so much mentally as well that you really uh

51:52

bothered to get into my head a bit and i i have to say that that

51:59

is has become the strategy that because without somebody there it’s not

52:05

the same i don’t i don’t think so your being there is extremely important similarly with those who are um you know

52:14

living and experiencing or spending time in certain areas some of the projects of silvan wong say are very

52:22

interesting because he’s in touch with people on the ground so many of his reconstruct but he is

52:28

actually it’s very difficult for him to be there when you’re first to be there in certain

52:34

kinds of situations and in that sense it’s these are reconstructions

52:39

based on first-hand reports and that’s also a very powerful way in which

52:45

artists enter certain kinds of space so he’s almost like an investigative journalist himself

52:50

but he puts all that together in kind of drawing the missing history that

52:58

we will never see or giving it an image so

53:07

maxine maybe do you want to talk a little bit about that boundary between the simulation and the real between your

53:12

work and how maybe you and the team kind of talk about this and approach this challenge

53:20

yeah no there’s my mind is just all over the place because of uh you know these

53:26

presentations are they have something in common and i’m trying to spot what’s the best way to to shape

53:33

the phrase that but um sure i mean for us we work with simulations quite a lot and

53:41

it’s our way to kind of understand something um in a different way you know there’s this

53:47

uh kind of um i don’t remember who’s who said it but i i read the other day this kind of

53:54

quote that says that the model is not an image but an engine and it’s

53:59

kind of this idea that it’s not like with the model you do not just only represent something

54:05

and then it’s like whatever like let’s just let it sit it’s also something that you can actively do

54:11

so for us um kind of studying this uh vancouver case is uh

54:18

uh he’s definitely kind of an attempt to go towards there but i mean i also i also had to google

54:24

the words scorched because it didn’t know it and uh we actually like

54:30

i mean it’s a massive project that happens here in kiev that has to do with like trying to understand um

54:35

events of second world war because you know ukraine is only recently independent so there’s still archives

54:41

that are classified and stuff and we are involved into this project

54:46

where part of it is trying to understand how apparently soviets exploded most of the

54:53

city centered when germans entered the city so like we are literally like working with that material now like

54:59

working with the footage um the film footage that we

55:05

found and you know like trying to figure out all the and also like doing this kind of forensic uh study of you know the

55:11

architecture of the city and how it changed and how that those things are so i mean um

55:18

for me like jesse you probably know that this question of a modeling and like kind of real and the

55:24

model is kind of almost a core thing to what we do but um i mean yeah it’s also fascinating to

55:30

think about it in connection to other presentations yeah yeah i like that idea of the engine

55:38

modeling something can bring us somewhere else or it can give us an image of where to go

55:44

um or i guess in some ways maybe this christina you could touch on this too is

55:49

like what’s not just modeling it’s like we’re mirroring things like between worlds and then they keep

55:55

seem to be meeting each other in certain ways and that goes in good directions and bad directions

56:01

in some ways um but maybe um christina you want to talk about that really in relation to your practice

56:08

yeah thank you i am loving all of the presentations and conversations i feel like um like maxine said i have

56:15

like a million things going on in my mind right now at once um i think for me

56:21

like i’m thinking about this relationship i might stray from what your question began where it began but um

56:28

it’s just relationship between like thinking about technology and one space in another space online and

56:33

off in a few different ways um one of the ways

56:38

um that i sort of think about it in this more sort of aerial perspective or like macro view is thinking about

56:44

how it is that technology and these online spaces are shaping how we visualize the world or how we

56:50

come to know the land that we’re on um i loved something that zasha said about

56:57

the satellite image as like an image of genocide and like thinking about how our

57:03

relationship to um an idea concept a trauma like genocide might be mediated through

57:09

technology um and something that maxime said about at the beginning of

57:15

your talk about patterns and um it really struck me how you were talking about

57:21

gentrification and sort of these developments in urban centers as being really unique and specific locally in different places

57:27

but then there is this pattern that’s common across all of it and i for me that’s sort of how i

57:33

situate thinking about technology and these uh these sort of things that we have in common

57:38

um that i think has been really magnified across pandemic as we’ve been moved and sort of not

57:44

forced into spending more time online but a little bit um and so for me that’s been really

57:50

useful in some ways to think about like what it means to be on this land

57:55

where i am located now but then also pulling from ideas and concepts

58:01

and strategies and tactics that others are using in other localities um and then sort of building community

58:09

that way so sort of um you know like trying and working to build community where i am

58:14

and sort of to think about how it is that we might um

58:19

address some of the like pretty terrible things that are happening in this province where i live right now

58:26

um but also as a way to um get the word out a little bit and to

58:31

sort of spread the experience of what’s happening here because one of the things i really realized um

58:39

since moving back to alberta is there’s a real lack of understanding across even the country across other provinces

58:45

of really having a view of what’s going on on the ground here um and so i’m really thinking about this

58:50

idea of spreading um uh just experience as well and how technology can help support that

58:57

but then also like pulling from tactics that others are using because that’s maxine referred to like these things are

59:03

happening all over the world and there are tactics that i think are useful that can be

59:08

um modeled or mirrored just as you alluded to um and sort of pulled from and

59:16

i think now a days like that sort of expanding beyond the local is kind of necessary to help us

59:22

relate to the local a little bit stronger

59:28

kind of picking up on that thread christina um i i just kind of i noticed um even in the app that you

59:35

guys at least two of you had memes as your opening images and i know that like spending deep time

59:42

with a lot of your research like the really big complex challenging ideas and i think each of

59:47

you individually like with doma like even thinking about vancouver’s like really challenging

59:52

history of this huge other curve of in affordability it’s it’s really beautiful to witness

59:58

then this mapping of it being you know like it’s not a super dense heavy research you get to like have the

1:00:04

access of witnessing how that transitions or like this visual translation um

1:00:10

i think about this also like in forecasting with you christina like how bringing the community together instead

1:00:16

of just giving them like a research report or something but generating the conversation as a

1:00:21

place to to gather like how that might be a different way of sharing or accessing knowledge

1:00:27

but even actually it’s like almost i think a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about is like

1:00:32

weaving or poetry so it almost feels like it’s like that um that translation is almost

1:00:38

like a like the opposite sort of translation of like the um visual object holding on this

1:00:44

complexity and then having to translate that complex sort of um ancestral

1:00:50

knowledge out of that object but i wonder if you can talk about um like the ways that like community is

1:00:56

generated through the ways that we share knowledge um and so i don’t know if that’s a yeah

1:01:01

if that resonates with you folks yeah maybe i’ll jump in just because

1:01:08

you’ve sparked some uh sort of things that i’ve been thinking about um because so far

1:01:14

at least the sort of tangible um exchange that’s beginning to happen in my research with this project

1:01:21

i’ve been really thinking a lot about how to shape conversation with others

1:01:26

um in a way that also considers thinking about exchange and not just extraction but um working

1:01:32

collaboratively from the beginning and i think jesse and tao and nicole you all know

1:01:38

how this in some ways has been uh not a hang up but yeah it took me a while to sort of think it through

1:01:44

um really wanting to not only have a conversation that moves

1:01:50

outward to others like how i think often you know zoom presentations do i think we’re

1:01:55

moving beyond that here um but engages with uh with a larger

1:02:01

conversation as well so recognizing that i want to sort of collaborate with people as opposed to just like talk to

1:02:06

them or talk outward to them um so i’m really thinking about how we

1:02:11

can come together you know beginning with like visual cues or things that we might have in common

1:02:17

or texts that come from elsewhere as a starting point how we might generate images

1:02:23

on our own that sort of reflect on the knowledge that we’re reading together or thinking through

1:02:28

together and then how that can be the starting point for a conversation as opposed to sort of the end point of a

1:02:34

conversation

1:02:42

yeah i mean i can say a quick thing that was actually a proposal of jesse last time he saw research was

1:02:51

to kind of uh instead of just like um um a strange ukrainian team who’s

1:02:58

crunching data from vancouver to also kind of use it almost like um prompt to

1:03:03

then talk to some of the most prominent researchers who study vancouver housing crisis

1:03:10

and for me it’s like it’s i mean it’s both obvious but also think that this was like um

1:03:15

not necessarily directly in our immediate plans so i mean things like that where you

1:03:21

know like this uh tax data exists is this kind of impenetrable

1:03:26

excel sheets that are like you need to spend some hours to even like you know open properly and

1:03:33

then kind of trying to get them into an image that is kind of implying something and that looking at which you kind of immediately

1:03:40

can see certain patterns i think it’s really powerful kind of similarly to what christina just said

1:03:45

right that kind of can also generate the conversation that it wouldn’t happen otherwise um and it kind of can almost

1:03:53

become something more than an image you know like something that is um again a sort of an engine

1:04:02

um i don’t know if that’s directly kind of responding to what you said

1:04:08

nicole but that’s what came to my mind yeah definitely like i i feel like those

1:04:14

visuals but or even like i feel like the way you guys have like some of your decks and stuff too it’s

1:04:19

it’s like that similar sort of like uh breakdown so um breakdown of the knowledge so it can be accessible

1:04:26

to the different kinds of folks but yeah i really like what you say about like even just like finding

1:04:31

the ex like the barriers to like okay how do you find the excel sheet how do you get the excel sheet open how do you actually read or understand

1:04:38

and then eliminating all those big hurdles allows a different kind of participation so you totally answered my question or

1:04:46

problem but i’m sorry yours is like the opposite side of the question

1:04:52

like yeah yeah well i just i think it’s really beautiful the way that you’re thinking about

1:04:57

like weaving like i felt like a lot of our conversations around the beginning are like how does a wee being hold knowledge but it’s like

1:05:04

kind of the visual starts before and then the complex knowledge comes after or something

1:05:11

yeah i uh i i would really like to find

1:05:18

uh you know i think i keep finding these these spirit practices i

1:05:25

don’t know what to call it spirit not spiritual but you know and uh i’m

1:05:31

i have a hunch i might find some more um this is you know

1:05:37

what i’m this is the way i’m trying to look but i might be totally wrong um but i’m looking through

1:05:45

yes weaving poetry but it’s not really limit what i’m really looking for is these

1:05:51

ideas of a kind of kind of oral tradition i guess that has preserved

1:05:56

some of this power um i yeah i for me it’s something that’s very

1:06:03

contemporary i don’t think it’s gone i don’t think it’s incompatible with

1:06:08

you know and i really liked what you said maxine about the model i

1:06:14

wish i i knew more about that because i think um

1:06:19

that the model can is something that does things did you you were quoting someone with

1:06:25

something like this that the model of the fiction is not a simulation but is doing

1:06:30

something able to activate

1:06:36

something i think that this is really a powerful idea and i would

1:06:44

um don’t know how i will use it but i’m i’m sure it it’s it’s similar to you know coming

1:06:52

up with a missing archive or missing image also offer history but on so in one way it’s

1:06:58

that and it’s definitely doing something but it’s also um i think by making a change in the

1:07:05

model we can visualize right what we need what it might be possible so um so

1:07:14

yes somehow i i i just wanted to mention that it doesn’t relate to my project but i do like

1:07:19

visual things i like tangible things as well even and i think some of the way your modeling is is

1:07:26

quite tactile and the meme you know and this is is

1:07:34

is really important to me this ability to visualize it because it’s going back to the kind of idea that

1:07:41

the imagination is political like the more we visualize

1:07:46

it the more we enact a new politics so

1:07:54

i think that’s a good point to continue i think like when you brought up um rani guindalu and you described talking

1:08:01

about sorcery is strange i didn’t think it was strange at all because um what

1:08:06

maybe they called sorcery in the 1930s we call vibes in 2020 and you know i think we know the power

1:08:13

of vibes and the story and the memetic momentum that we can fall under

1:08:19

and we’ve seen very negative examples of that in recent years and i think we need to

1:08:25

look at these moments more um concretely and investigatively

1:08:30

and figure out like what are these mechanisms that push us in these directions like almost some like it’s like a it’s

1:08:38

like a fungus that communicates amongst itself like thinking about christina’s work and

1:08:43

the images of these fungi spreading across surfaces but this seems to be the memetic energy and so how do like where does it come

1:08:49

from and how do we use it to go in different directions like to go in the direction of something like maxine’s indominus project

1:08:56

and how do we get this sorcery or this vibe to to kind of push us in this direction

1:09:07

uh yeah i should stop saying that because sorcery is the word it is the colonial word used to describe

1:09:14

the practice but uh i like the embracing of it

1:09:20

and taking it you know kind of absurd logical conclusion that

1:09:27

yes

1:09:32

i’m sorry

1:09:38

i’m just thinking i love this i love thinking about this idea of mechanisms and models and where they overlap and

1:09:44

where they differ and it seems to me that model and i agree maximum the way that you

1:09:50

defined it was really lovely as a sort of active term something it implies change it implies the ability

1:09:57

to be flexible and to change and how mechanism implies sort of the opposite of this sort of like

1:10:02

rigid structure that um isn’t pliable but i think um or i sort of hope at

1:10:10

least that for me like thinking through crisis and disaster is a way to redefine mechanism as strategy and

1:10:17

realize ah it actually is just a model and if you think about it as a model it can be flexible and it can change

1:10:23

it doesn’t have to exist forever the way that it is um and like hopefully this is something

1:10:29

that maybe another one of these patterns that we all have in common is realizing that all of these things can

1:10:36

shift over time especially right now hopefully or maybe

1:10:41

housing is something so concrete you think you’ll never be able to shift something as ingrained as that something as globally

1:10:49

ingrained as that it’s capitalism at its best i guess

1:11:02

did you i want to say something that goes in a totally different direction but i don’t want to lose the i mean i wrote it down you said um

1:11:10

something about where the prairie and the forest meet and we’re talking about what were you describing yeah so the

1:11:18

biome um or the ecosystem that i live within is called the aspen parkland and

1:11:24

essentially it is that sort of point where on the land where prairie and forest um are constantly in in constant tension

1:11:32

with one another um constantly trying to sort of overtake the other and push one another back

1:11:37

uh but live very much in balance with one another um and then and and sort of maybe just

1:11:43

also recognize that um that ecosystem is also very much at sort

1:11:50

of the mercy of extraction and industry and exploitation of the land itself but in its natural sense um the two

1:11:59

biomes or the two ecosystems work to generate this uh biome that’s constantly in flux which

1:12:08

i think is quite beautiful and sort of where i help situate this thinking about disaster as well

1:12:14

i just feel a very strong connection with that idea of this meeting edge

1:12:20

between two different ecologies it’s something i’ve tried to think about in terms of

1:12:27

in terms of my work which is not so

1:12:34

not in this case only logical but yeah speaking not just of forests

1:12:40

actually but the meeting edge even between one kind of area and a river one kind of ecology in

1:12:48

the river because i started to look at very scientific papers about how

1:12:53

it’s the meeting edge that is the most biodiverse not the center of the forest but the

1:12:59

edge where it meets you know a desert or it’s a very different kind of ecology but also happens to be the place that

1:13:07

coincides with hot spots you know places that are

1:13:12

also the most in danger and also the most um

1:13:18

hot spots also because then the place is most in conflict human conflict most under human conflict uh

1:13:26

and so it was yeah very it’s just a it’s a statistical thing it’s a mapping

1:13:32

but i wonder whether you relate to these things if i say them to you do you feel that compared to the center

1:13:38

it’s these meeting edges where you have somehow the best natural resources the most

1:13:44

human contaminations leading to the most you know by contaminations i mean most

1:13:50

different kinds of cultural diversities different

1:13:55

ethnicities at least historically it would have been

1:14:01

the case that people are drawn to the meeting edge and it seems that it is biodiverse and probably also

1:14:08

minerally diverse if it’s leading to extractivism and so um

1:14:16

yeah you know i really uh thought it’s interesting you marked that in your presentation this

1:14:22

between the prairie and the forest yeah and i think you’re speaking to like

1:14:29

both the sort of the beauty of it and the trouble with it um

1:14:35

because that tent you’re exactly right that i think that that’s when that’s where extraction extractive

1:14:41

industries are sort of most um um attracted to because of things

1:14:47

like diversity within ecosystem and so it’s this sort of constant also tension of

1:14:52

like the thing that allows at least in this region for extractive industries to exist and to

1:14:58

succeed um is the diversity of the land itself and it are the resources

1:15:04

naturally that occur here um but as the extractive industries pull out and pilfer those natural

1:15:11

resources they too sort of lose their ability as an industry to survive into the future

1:15:16

right and so it’s like this constant um boom and bust which is uh the cycle that i’m particularly

1:15:24

interested in looking at through this research of how that boom and bust might be sort of leveled and thought about differently

1:15:30

so that we’re not constantly at the this ridiculous sort of mercy of um having excess and then having

1:15:36

extreme loss and back and forth

1:15:42

and you mentioned the pipeline is it connected to this area yeah yeah i feel like we could have like

1:15:48

we could have a three-hour conversation about the keystone pipeline saga

1:15:53

as it’s going on right now um yeah so it’s not happening

1:16:02

maybe we should just leave it there despite the i don’t know provincial desire for it to

1:16:09

continue um but maybe this is also something that you were just bringing up about um like i loved this idea of thinking

1:16:17

about um when you were talking about i think you said something about the ladies

1:16:23

of spirits but sort of thinking about the witch or the idea of the witch in sort of contrast to politics or as a

1:16:31

strategy for working when politics isn’t a space for you to sort of

1:16:36

engage with these things um and i think like this is also what’s really interesting about this precise moment

1:16:43

um where there is all of this flux but then you know like a day passes and in the case of this region that day was

1:16:49

when a new president was elected in the united states and how suddenly now this entire perspective

1:16:55

and keystone pipeline as an example um like is propelled into this whole other

1:17:01

conversation in reality um and sort of that like constant moving over boundaries of like something’s one

1:17:07

thing one day and the next day it’s something else as maybe another reminder of how these

1:17:13

models are pliable right they can shift um and maybe there’s a way that we can take

1:17:19

better control of shifting those models as opposed to like relying on um

1:17:26

the way that housing has to be why could it not be this other model of housing

1:17:37

we just have about 10 minutes left so um [Music] oh maybe tau you can unmute me

1:17:45

sorry about maximus oh um we have about 10 minutes left so

1:17:50

maybe um i’ll open it to the audience and if you have any questions just please put them in the q a

1:17:56

chat window and we can ask the panelists uh and then maybe if you have any questions amongst

1:18:01

yourselves it doesn’t have to be through the conversations whatever you’re having if there’s anything scratching your mind from each other

1:18:07

some presentations please do ask away

1:18:13

when we wait for questions i i just wanted to say one tiny thing about like i totally see what

1:18:20

uh sasha you’re saying by um that you know housing is this kind of materialized

1:18:25

capitalism but just like as an anecdote uh when i the year i was born uh the

1:18:31

city fully like there was no private property right so uh like everyone just had their house

1:18:39

there there was no way to like own a house and sell a house that was just like uh

1:18:44

i mean it was like 30 years ago so um i mean it just kind of um you know i

1:18:51

tease francesco this way because he’s french and he’s also grew up in this kind of more western perspective of like you know

1:18:57

like uh home is the essence of economy and stuff like that so when i i’m just saying that to kind of say that

1:19:04

you know there’s like a vast um kind of

1:19:09

variability of what could potentially happen though i know that it’s very unlikely so um yeah let’s hope for for radical

1:19:20

things i love that tension of like knowing it’s possible and also knowing that maybe

1:19:26

it’s unlikely though because i feel like that being in that position is where i don’t

1:19:31

know there is so much potential truly like um because you’re also realistic

1:19:36

but have this vision for something else

1:19:44

we do have one question from the audience um coming from uh jennifer jackson uh wondering if

1:19:51

christina can talk more about the potentials of pliability between my earlier proposition between simulation

1:19:59

and the real um i’m just reading so that i can make

1:20:06

sure i’m understanding the question right can you see it in the chat window there uh yeah

1:20:12

the potentials of pliability

1:20:18

yeah i think um so maybe i

1:20:26

can definitely see the potentials um but maybe where i’m sort of questioning um how those potentials are realized is

1:20:33

um sort of been thinking about it like you know connecting [Music]

1:20:38

between this simulated space between virtual spaces which over the last year for me has been

1:20:45

really important and also has really increased a lot like i’m i feel like i’m a part of a number of

1:20:50

communities now that i hadn’t been before and that is precisely because of the pandemic and things shifting online

1:20:57

um but where i sort of question is like yeah but what what comes next from that so there are all of these spaces um a

1:21:04

lot of them are also bypoc spaces which i think is also something that um has really sort of taken more shape

1:21:11

over the last like since the summer essentially and the spaces are so important

1:21:17

and i really value them but i sort of want to know what happens next and it might be that the next thing is

1:21:23

that those spaces in those communities continue to be virtual and that’s fantastic and then we sort of

1:21:28

take what we learn from those online spaces and um engage with them and bring them

1:21:33

into sort of offline space in our own localities but at the same time like i would love to be in

1:21:38

community with those individuals like in the offline world and we don’t all live in the same place

1:21:44

or in the same country um so yeah it’s sort of a question and maybe

1:21:49

where i’m at right now with thinking it about it is maybe i just need to reframe and rethink um

1:21:56

how i how i see value in like offline community and realize that maybe there’s just as

1:22:03

much value in these simulated virtual online connections as well

1:22:09

um so especially with like my seed saving project and the work that i’ve been doing with there

1:22:14

i’ve been really thinking a lot about um yeah nicole has a pack um from a recent project of like how it

1:22:22

is that um sort of extending this responsibility onto those who are connecting online

1:22:27

together and then how it’s up to them to take that responsibility into their own communities or into their own

1:22:33

environments and work with it there

1:22:39

that’s a great question i yeah maybe it remains to be seen great um christina we have another

1:22:48

question for you coming from um jeff um i’m stuck on your project’s

1:22:53

push to move outside of capitalism’s built-in cycles of breakdown by turning to other models of exchange

1:23:00

the success of these cycles of creating destruction are themselves naturalized into

1:23:05

capitalism so how do you see your project denaturalizing the way capitalism

1:23:12

naturalizes its own cycles of destruction and dispossession [Music]

1:23:17

that’s such a great question

1:23:22

um i think yeah in some sense my answer is like it’s a

1:23:28

question of language in a way because i think um you know cycles of breakdown are built into all of these other models and

1:23:35

of exchange especially if you’re thinking about plant systems um but i think that the way that cycles

1:23:40

of breakdown occur are sort of envisioned uh within plant systems by plants themselves

1:23:46

to think forward into the future and to think more collectively um so those cycles adapt based on the

1:23:53

collective um i’m picking my language carefully but based on collective will

1:23:59

and collective need and and in turn then that breakdown doesn’t have the same

1:24:06

effect that i think it does in a capitalistic system um so there’s this balance that i’m sort of striving for

1:24:12

so it’s not to say that destruction itself won’t always be naturalized um because i think you know

1:24:19

like there is this sort of necessary echo um environmental need for things to come

1:24:24

and things to go it’s sort of a part of it um but i think it’s this reframing of

1:24:29

thinking about how how it’s envisioned into the future and who’s affected more than

1:24:35

than other i hope i’m answering that question entirely i mean it’s interesting even in

1:24:42

terms of like if you project this back into housing thing right like we are kind of used to use this phrase housing crisis which is

1:24:49

like you know it’s like a status quo like we we don’t anymore have any other

1:24:55

uh language because we already know that we live in the crisis so what just live with it right like this

1:25:01

this idea of uh more advanced vocabulary that like better spots

1:25:07

what are the real issues and how to deal with them

1:25:14

um maxine speaking of real issues we have a we do have a question for you from um eric lesage

1:25:20

and he’s um asking i’m interested how doma intersects with homelessness how

1:25:26

does the modeling take into consideration communities like tent cities or those who are precariously housed

1:25:31

motorhomes cars etc right it’s a point of vague discussion

1:25:39

in the team we never publicly talked about how we look at these and

1:25:46

it’s a complicated matter for us for the reason that um i mean also specifically in vancouver

1:25:53

they’re such a big percent of um homeless people that when we model things we

1:25:58

should somehow indicate that right like there’s like um um it’s it’s certainly like the thing i

1:26:06

mentioned um about ukraine is like you know because in 92 1992 we still had public ownership

1:26:15

of properties we have homeownership rate of something like uh 92

1:26:20

um and that’s like kind of makes us a bit uh like

1:26:27

it makes us look at these things in a bit of a different way but um i mean i have to respond to this

1:26:33

question in a way that like a doma project looks at it and the truth is we are not

1:26:38

looking at that issue because what we’re trying to do is to

1:26:44

basically change a bit of the current situation in a way that uh

1:26:50

kind of imagines an alternative form of ownership and to do that it still is quite i mean like properties is as i

1:26:58

said one of the most expensive things that people buy and it’s hard to to think about it in in this kind of

1:27:04

complete um decommodified way so we’re just kind of trying to

1:27:10

create this hack which makes it easier for people makes it more fair and stuff like that

1:27:15

but um i mean the the problem of homelessness is

1:27:21

is beyond the scope of our project but it’s certainly something that we are often confronted with and we think about

1:27:27

also with other projects that i’m involved with

1:27:33

and in a way like i know that the project of doma is really like you know you’re two years out from

1:27:38

the conceptualization of the idea which is pretty bold to begin with and now we’re

1:27:44

modeling and testing out certain you know what would you call it just

1:27:49

kind of like case studies on different cities as you’re modeling for games and for projects like

1:27:55

hours of 221a but you know my understanding of the platform cooperative is that there is collective governance

1:28:01

of the of all users um and so in a way these larger issues

1:28:07

that are encompassed within the issue that doma is tackling but

1:28:13

maybe um the externality of it is so grand that the idea can’t quite get there yet

1:28:18

that the idea of believing and working in a platform cooperative puts the the challenge to the users um to figure

1:28:25

out what’s the governance structure that will allow the network to then resolve um these

1:28:30

issues locally and then what do we learn from these local solutions that can then be shared between the different cities

1:28:38

so i think it’s more the potential of where this can come out of the user because of course your team is like 10

1:28:43

people in a one bedroom apartment in in key working day after day so it’s kind of like we

1:28:49

don’t expect you to have all the answers i don’t think either yeah no i’m indeed very careful to

1:28:56

just to not say that you know we have uh we’re preparing this kind of massive solution

1:29:02

um right um all right and that’s

1:29:10

that’s all for questions so far from the audience um and maybe we can leave it there

1:29:15

because we’re at about 11 30 here on uh pacific uh time so

1:29:20

um please stay tuned to these projects and the way you can do that is i’m signing up to our newsletter at

1:29:26

221a.ca finding us on instagram or on twitter um you can email

1:29:31

the staff nicole myself and tao and ask questions on how to get involved there’ll be different kind of

1:29:37

community building and kind of workshop initiatives to generate knowledge throughout these projects and

1:29:43

i’m just so blessed and thankful for the work that we’ve been able to do together so far

1:29:48

and maxine and christina and sasha and the whole team at dolma and i also want to do one big shout out

1:29:54

to another member who’s working on the doma project but he’s a sustainability scholar at the university of british columbia charles

1:30:00

pan who’s in his final year of his masters of community and regional planning who’s been helping to translate these large

1:30:06

data sets um with doma and understand the issues on the ground here so thank you charles

1:30:11

i think you’re listening earlier but maybe class pulled you back into something else i don’t know

1:30:17

but we’ll leave it there and if you want to go back to this recording it should be on our website in the coming days so thank you everyone

1:30:24

thank you thank you so much thanks see you guys ciao

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