Our Counter-Mapping Workshop took place March 20, 2023 from 12:00 PM to 2:30 PM on the 5th floor of the MacDonald Harrington Building. We invited members of two counter-mapping projects, Queering the Map and the Parc-Ex Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, to discuss the possibilities, limitations, and ethical implications of their work.
Counter-mapping can be a powerful tool for promoting social and spatial justice. It can make visible what is often invisible and shed light on issues and stories that otherwise remain hidden. In addition to visualizing spatial data, counter-mapping can be used to record and archive community-based stories.
Featuring:
Lucas LaRochelle (they/them) is a designer and researcher whose work is concerned with queer and trans digital cultures, co-creative media, and artificial intelligence. They are the founder of “Queering The Map,” a community-generated counter-mapping project for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space. Anyone can anonymously record their queer experiences at specific locations on a collective map.
Yannick Baumann (he/him) is a PhD student at Université de Montréal's Geography Department in co-direction with the Geomedia Lab at Concordia University. Drawing on participative and activist methodologies, his research focuses on the potential of (digital) data and (digital) tools to foster community relations and to support housing struggles. His primary interests are housing justice, financialization of housing, data activism, and alternative cartographies.
Nuzhat Niaz (she/her) is a community organizer at the Comité d’action de Parc-Extension (CAPE), a tenants’ rights association based in the Montreal neighbourhood of Parc-Extension, and a research assistant at Concordia University. She has a long experience in community organizing and advocacy, having worked with Oxfam, ActionAid and Teach for Bangladesh. Baumann and Niaz created the Parc-Ex Anti-Eviction Mapping Project to highlight the evolution and distribution of evictions in the Parc Extension neighborhood of Montreal.