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The Politics of
Spatial Transgressions
in the Arts
Edited by
Gregory Blair · Noa Bronstein
The Politics of Spatial Transgressions in the Arts
Gregory Blair · Noa Bronstein
Editors
The Politics of Spatial

Transgressions
in the Arts
Editors
Gregory Blair Noa Bronstein
Evansville, IN, USA Toronto, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-030-55388-3 ISBN 978-3-030-55389-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55389-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
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now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover image: Jessica Thalmann, Utopos (Computer Engineer Working in Lab B10), folded
archival pigment print, 2015
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 The Politics of Spatial Transgressions in the Arts 1

Gregory Blair
Part I Displacements
2 From Place-Making to Placelessness: How Arts

Organizations Attend to Issues of Displacement
and Affordability 17
Noa Bronstein
3 Tong Yan Gaai: Redefining Racialized Spaces 33

Morris Lum
4 Mapping Evictions: Urban Displacement

and the Myths of the Sharing Economy 51
Noni Brynjolson
5 The City as a Composition: Working Through

Geographies of Identity, Belonging, and Memory 67
Joshua Hagen
v
vi CONTENTS
6 Out of Place: Displacements of the Body in Artistic

Practice 87
Gregory Blair
Part II Disruptions
7 Losing Site: Folded Morphologies of Photography

and Brutalist Architecture 105
Jessica Thalmann
8 Souped Up: Slow Building of Support Networks

Through Commensality 123
Marsya Maharani and Geneviève Wallen
9 Mapping as Aesthetic Practice: Toward a Theory

of Carto-Aesthetics 137
Simonetta Moro
10 Learning from Las Vegas Redux: Steve Wynn

and the New Business of Art 149
Dorothy Barenscott
11 Epilogue 177
Noa Bronstein and Gregory Blair
Index 183
Notes on Contributors
Dorothy Barenscott is an art historian whose research relates to the

interplay between urban space and emerging technology and media forms
in the articulation of a range of identities. Her publication record reflects
these interests with examinations of painted panoramas, experimental and
mainstream cinema, modern architecture, conceptual photography, radical
place-making, theories of the avant-garde, cosmopolitanism, and the busi-
ness of art and art collecting. Barenscott is co-editor of Canadian Culi-
nary Imaginations (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020), an interdis-
ciplinary collection that explores how Canadian writers, artists, academics,
cooks, performers, and gallery curators are inspired and challenged by the
topic of food, and her essays have appeared in journals such as Postmodern
Culture Journal, Invisible Culture, History and Memory, and Mediascape.
Barenscott completed her Ph.D. in Art History, Visual Art, and Theory
at the University of British Columbia, and currently teaches modern and
contemporary art history and theory in Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s
Fine Arts Department. Outside of her academic research, Barenscott acts
as an art consultant for Openwork Art Advisory, leads interdisciplinary
student groups on field schools to global art cities, and maintains a public
blog, Avant-Guardian Musings, dedicated to visual culture research and
pedagogy.
Gregory Blair is an artist, writer, and educator whose research incor-
porates interdisciplinary art practices, mobility studies, cultural geog-
raphy, environmental aesthetics, continental philosophy, eco-criticism, and
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
philosophies of place. Greg has exhibited his artwork and presented

his research both nationally and internationally, in locations including
Portugal, Italy, NYC, New Orleans, Boston, Alaska, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
Minneapolis, and Canada. His first book, Errant Bodies, Mobility, and
Political Resistance, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. His
most recent solo exhibition titled, Topographies of Memories, was exhibited
at the Brookings Arts Council in SD. From 2009 to 2019, Greg was an
Associate Professor of Art at Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD.
Greg is originally from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada and currently resides
in Evansville, Indiana with his wife, two children, and their energetic
firecracker of a dog, Luna.
Noa Bronstein is a curator and writer based in Toronto, Canada. Her
practice is most often focused on considering issues around place and
space-making and thinking through how artists disrupt and subvert
systems including those registering across social, political, and economic
structures. Noa has held several positions in the arts including Execu-
tive Director of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, inau-
gural Senior Curator at the Small Arms Inspection Building, and Project
Manager at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her writing has appeared in
such publications as PREFIX Photo, Canadian Art, Border Crossings,
The Journal of Curatorial Studies and C Magazine. Recent curatorial
projects include When Form Becomes Attitude at Contemporary Calgary,
bust/boom at The New Gallery (Calgary), With an instinct for justice at
Doris McCarthy Gallery (Toronto) and Aleesa Cohene’s solo exhibition
I Don’t Get It at Gallery 44 (Toronto), The Rooms (St. John’s), and
Western Front (Vancouver). Noa is currently the Executive Director of
Gallery TPW.
Noni Brynjolson is an art historian who studies collaborative public art
projects. Her research analyzes large-scale, long-term works in which
artists address the politics of housing and neighborhood redevelopment
through forms of cultural production and community organizing. Noni
is a member of the editorial collective of FIELD: A Journal of Socially
Engaged Art Criticism and her writing has appeared in FIELD as well as
in Hyperallergic, Akimbo, Geist and Craft Journal. Noni completed her
Ph.D. in Art History, Theory, & Criticism at the University of California,
San Diego in 2019. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art History
at the University of Indianapolis.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
Joshua Hagen Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Dr. Hagen has published widely on
issues related to the cultural politics of architecture, urban design, historic
preservation, and memory. His recent publications include the books The
City as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity and Building
Nazi Germany: Space, Place, Architecture, and Ideology.
Morris Lum is a Trinidadian born photographer/artist whose work
explores the hybrid nature of the Chinese-Canadian community through
photography, form, and documentary practices. His work also examines
the ways in which Chinese history is represented in the media and archival
material. Morris’ work has been exhibited and screened across Canada and
the United States. He is currently working on a cross North American
project that looks specifically at the transformation of the Chinatown.
Marsya Maharani is an independent curator, working exclusively in
collaboration with others—including as part of the collectives Gendai,
Younger Than Beyoncé, and MICE Magazine. Informed by her posi-
tion as an immigrant and settler, her projects explore experimentation
in learning, working, and playing together that nourishes diverse ways
of thinking, specifically in relation to feminism, decolonization, and
meaningful inclusion. This is reflected in recent and ongoing collab-
orative projects that test models of profit-sharing (MOCA Goes Dark:
Night Visions ), resource-sharing (Gendai MA MBA: Mastering the Art
of Misguided Business Administration), and kitchen table knowledge-
sharing (Souped Up). She is interested in the practice of collective care
and radical friendship as grounds for institutional structure, work culture,
and labor practices. She has worked institutionally as Assistant Curator
at Sheridan College and as Exhibition Coordinator at the Art Museum
and the University of Toronto. Currently Marsya serves on the board of
SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and is a Toronto Arts Council
Leaders Lab Fellow. She holds an M.A. in Contemporary Art, Design and
New Media Art Histories from OCAD University and will be pursuing
a doctorate degree at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York
University. She was born in Jakarta and now lives in Toronto/Tkaronto.
Simonetta Moro is a visual artist and theorist, with a focus on painting,
drawing, and mapping practices. Her artwork has been exhibited interna-
tionally, including Galleria del Carbone, Ferrara, Italy; BRIC Art House,
New York; Center for Architecture, New York; Museum of Contemporary
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Art, Chicago; the American Academy in Rome, Italy; the Harris Museum,
Preston, UK. Moro’s research in cartographic aesthetics informs many of
her works and academic papers, including a book she is currently writing,
Cartographic Paradigms in Modern and Contemporary Art (forthcoming
by Routledge: Advances in Art and Visual Studies, 2021). Moro grad-
uated with a Ph.D. in Fine Arts, University of Central Lancashire,
Preston, UK; MA European Fine Arts, Winchester School of Art, UK;
and BFA Painting, Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna, Italy. Simonetta
Moro currently lives in New York City, and is the Director and Associate
Professor at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA).
Jessica Thalmann is an artist and educator currently based in Toronto
and New York City. She received an MFA in Advanced Photographic
Studies from ICP-Bard College and a BFA in Visual Arts from York
University. Thalmann has taught at the International Centre for Photog-
raphy, Akin Collective, MacLaren Art Centre, Toronto School of Art,
Gallery 44 and City College of New York. She has been an artist in resi-
dence at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada, and
at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia, USA. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Aperture
Foundation, International Centre for Photography, Camera Club of New
York Baxter St, and Humble Arts Foundation (New York), VIVO Media
Arts Centre (Vancouver), Museum of Contemporary Art, Harbourfront
Centre, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Angell Gallery, Gallery TPW, Art Spin,
and Gales Gallery at York University (Toronto). Her first solo museum
exhibition at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham is forthcoming.
Geneviève Wallen is a Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal-based independent curator
and writer. She obtained a BFA in Art History at Concordia University
(2012) and a MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD Univer-
sity (2015). Wallen’s practice is informed by diasporic narratives, inter-
sectional feminism, intergenerational dialogues, BIPOC alternative futu-
rities, and healing platforms. Her ongoing research focuses on the notion
of longevity as a methodology for resistance and care work in the arts.
Her most recent curated exhibition, Made of Honey, Gold, and Marigold
(2020), was on view at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Wallen
contributed essays for C magazine and the anthology Other Places; Reflec-
tions on Media Arts in Canada, edited by Deanna Bowen. She is an Exhi-
bition Coordinator at Fofa Gallery, a member of YTB (Younger Than
Beyoncé) collective, and is the co-initiator (with Marsya Maharani) of
Souped Up a thematic dinner series conceived to carve spaces for care
and support building among BIPOC curators and cultural workers.
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Golden Happiness Plaza, Calgary. Archival pigment print

by Morris Lum, 40 × 50 inches, 2015 (Image courtesy
of the artist) 34
Fig. 3.2 Mississauga Chinese Centre, archival pigment print
of the artist) 35
Fig. 3.3 Royal Dragon Chinese Restaurant, Mississauga, archival
pigment print by Morris Lum, 40 × 50 inches, 2012
(Image courtesy of the artist) 37
Fig. 3.4 Blue Lagoon Seafood Restaurant, Mississauga, archival
Fig. 3.5 233–235 Spadina Ave, Toronto, archival pigment print
of the artist) 40
of the artist) 41
of the artist) 42
Fig. 3.8 Market Alley, West Facing, Vancouver, archival pigment
print by Morris Lum, 40 × 50 inches, 2013 (Image
courtesy of the artist) 44
xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 3.9 Wong King Har Wun Sun Association, Toronto, archival
Fig. 3.10 Lim Family Association 121 Dundas Street W, Toronto,
archival pigment print by Morris Lum, 40 × 50 inches,
2012 (Image courtesy of the artist) 48
Fig. 3.11 New Chinatown, Los Angeles. Archival pigment print
of the artist) 49
Fig. 4.1 Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, All San Francisco
Eviction Notices, 1997 –2019, 2019 (Image courtesy
of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project) 56
Fig. 4.2 Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, SF Loss of Black
Population, 1970–2017 , 2017 (Image courtesy
of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project) 57
Fig. 4.3 Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Bay Area Evictor: Michael
Marr, 2017 (Image courtesy of the Anti-Eviction
Mapping Project) 58
Fig. 5.1 Lee monument in New Orleans after the removal
of the Lee statue in 2018 (Photograph by Joshua Hagen.
Image courtesy of the author) 73
Fig. 5.2 The Bronze Soldier in Tallinn after its relocation
in 2007 (Photograph by Joshua Hagen. Image courtesy
of the author) 74
Fig. 5.3 The City Palace in Berlin during reconstruction
in 2016 (Photograph by Joshua Hagen. Image courtesy
of the author) 77
Fig. 5.4 A reconstructed section of the Berlin Wall as part
of the Berlin Wall Memorial (Photograph by Joshua
Hagen. Image courtesy of the author) 78
Fig. 6.1 Jamie Smith, Spatial Intervention documentation, 2014
Fig. 6.2 Jamie Smith, Spatial Intervention documentation, 2014
Fig. 7.1 The Ninth Floor, 2-channel HD video installation
by Jessica Thalmann, 8 minutes, sound, 2015 (Image
courtesy of the artist) 108
Fig. 7.2 Utopos (Hall Building), folded archival pigment print
by Jessica Thalmann, 48 × 62 inches, unique, 2015
LIST OF FIGURES xiii
Fig. 7.3 Utopos (Computer Engineer Working in Lab B10), folded

archival pigment print by Jessica Thalmann, 48 × 52
inches, unique, 2015 (Image courtesy of the artist) 113
Fig. 7.4 Such Places as Memories, folded archival pigment print
by Jessica Thalmann, 17 × 22 inches, unique, 2019
Fig. 7.5 Faults and Fractures (Freeway Park), archival pigment
print by Jessica Thalmann, 10 × 14 inches, edition of 3,
2019 (Image courtesy of the artist) 117
Fig. 7.6 Elevations (Travertine), archival pigment print on Bristol
and foam by Jessica Thalmann, 42 × 48 × 18 inches,
unique, 2020 (Image courtesy of the artist) 119
Fig. 9.1 Multi-media installation The Laboratory of Dilemmas
by George Drivas, 2017. Presented at the 57th Venice
Biennale, 2017 (Photograph by Simonetta Moro. Image
courtesy of the author) 140
Fig. 9.2 In Pursuit of Venus [infected] by Lisa Reihana, Ultra HD
video, color, sound, 64 min across a 26 meters screen,
2015–2017. Presented at the 57th Venice Biennale,
2017 (Photograph by Simonetta Moro. Image courtesy
of the author) 144
Fig. 10.1 Bellagio Model Makers, c. 2000 (Photograph by Robert
Beckmann. Image courtesy of the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas Special Collections) 153
Fig. 10.2 Dale Chihuly Sculpture Fiori Di Como, in Bellagio lobby,
1998 (Photograph by Robert Beckmann. Image courtesy
of University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections) 155
Fig. 10.3 Picasso restaurant in Bellagio, c. 1998 (Photograph
by Robert Beckmann. Image courtesy of University
of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections) 157
Fig. 10.4 Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, 2018 (Photograph by David
Shane. Image courtesy of Creative Commons Attribution
2.0 Generic) 159
Fig. 10.5 Wynn interior, Las Vegas, 2008 (Photograph by Jim G.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons) 162
Fig. 10.6 Dining Tables and Chairs on Red Carpet, Wynn Casino,
Las Vegas, c. 2005 (Photograph by Ryan Grewal. Image
courtesy of Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic) 163
Fig. 10.7 Wynn and Encore, Las Vegas, 2008 (Photograph by Rob
Young. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons) 164
xiv LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 10.8 Jeff Koons, Popeye (2009–2011) was purchased by Wynn

at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014 for $28 million and placed
in the rotunda where the Wynn and Encore hotels
intersect (Photograph by Dorothy Barenscott. Image
courtesy of the author) 167
Fig. 10.9 Wynn Encore Macau, 2011 (Photograph by WiNG.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons) 168
Fig. 11.1 New Orleans: St. Claude Avenue along Marigny section
(Image courtesy of Infrogmation, 2008) 179
CHAPTER 1
The Politics of Spatial Transgressions

in the Arts
Gregory Blair
Introduction
The word “transgression” is rich and robust with a multitude of mean-
ings. It can suggest an action that is a violation or something that contra-
dicts a code or law. There is also an inherent spatial quality built into its
Latin etymology that intimates a “going beyond.” As a metaphor, trans-
gression evokes imagery of “stepping over”—the movement in space past
a defined boundary or limit. Historically, there have been numerous theo-
retical conceptualizations and descriptive methodologies that incorporate
transgression—many of which are echoed throughout this anthology. For
example, the philosopher Michel Foucault consistently wrote about, and
made use of, transgression. For Foucault, transgression represented, “the
still silent and groping apparition of a form of thought in which the
interrogation of the limit replaces the search for totality and the act of
transgression replaces the movement of contradictions.”1 In terms of
this anthology, Foucault’s conception is helpful and productive because
G. Blair (B)
Evansville, IN, USA
e-mail: gblair1@usi.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
G. Blair and N. Bronstein (eds.), The Politics of Spatial Transgressions
in the Arts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55389-0_1
2 G. BLAIR
he (re)frames transgression as a search, as an adaptable and construc-

tive method of seeking new knowledge. The interminable presence of
transgression in Foucault’s own thought and oeuvre is given a detailed
exposition by Charles C. Lemert and Garth Gillan in their text: Michel
Foucault: Social Theory and Transgression.
Another philosopher, bell hooks, has also written about how she has
latched onto transgression as a cornerstone of her methodology. For
hooks, transgression is wonderfully productive, because as she states,
“I cross boundaries to take another look, to contest, to interrogate,
and in some cases to recover and redeem.”2 The human geographer
Tim Cresswell has also completed extensive research on transgression
including the publication of such texts as: Geographies of Mobilities: Prac-
tices, Spaces, Subjects and In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and
Transgression. What interests Cresswell so much about transgression is
how physically crossing a boundary holds the potential for a rupture in
the normative social order. “The geographical ordering of society” writes
Cresswell, “is founded on a multitude of boundary making—of territori-
alization—whose ambiguity is to simultaneously open up the possibilities
for transgression.”3
The cultural theorist, Gloria Anzaldúa was also drawn to the possi-
bilities of transgression throughout her lifetime. In her formative text,
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she writes, “I am a border
woman.”4 A little further on in her writing she explains how she has
adopted transgression as a mode of existence—a way of being the new
mestiza. A mestiza or mestizo is a word traditionally used in Spain and
Latin America to indicate to someone of shared Indigenous American
and European descent. For Anzaldúa, being a mestiza meant that “Per-
haps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it
off all together as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new
and separate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities
are numerous once we decide to act and not react. These numerous
possibilities leave la mestiza floundering in uncharted seas. In perceiving
conflicting information and points of view, she is subjected to a swamping
of her psychological borders. The borders and walls that are supposed
to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and patterns of
behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigidity means
death.”5 For Anzaldúa, transgression became essential as the only way to
survive.
1 THE POLITICS OF SPATIAL TRANSGRESSIONS IN THE ARTS 3
The writer Malcolm Gladwell has also alluded to the practice of trans-
gression in a recent interview in which he discussed cultural subversion.
His portrayal of subversion and how one might practice it, is included
here to additionally widen our notion of what transgression can be, and
also to emphasize the eclectic range of cultural figures that have practiced
and played with transgression—from artists and philosophers to writers
and geographers. As you read the following quotation from the interview,
imagine Gladwell saying “transgression” when he says “subversion:” “You
do rebellion in the beginning, but rebellion is often kind of mindless.
You do subversion when you understand your culture enough to figure
out how to properly critique it—when you take a little needle, and you
insert it exactly in the right place, and you make the status quo squirm.”6
Gladwell provides such an ardent and poetic portrayal of the power of
subversion/transgression, and I think he would be sufficiently comfort-
able with the shift in utterance that I have suggested. Transgression is
often related to subversion—swapping one for the other is sometimes not
really much of a stretch.
Another recent discourse on transgression that has a kinship with Glad-
well’s comments was contemplated in an issue of the radical revolutionary
socialist journal, Red Wedge. In late 2018, an entire issue was dedicated to
the “defense of transgression.” In their editorial for the issue, Alexander
Billet and Adam Turl put forth their notion of transgression as a funda-
mental building block for human beings because it is the “starting point
for human self-discovery, of which art is a key and unavoidable part.”7 By
touching upon these manifold and disparate variations of transgression,
I have intended to demonstrate and embrace the ambiguity of transgres-
sion. This text purposefully embraces a vague and open-ended notion of
transgression, which David Sibley adroitly describes as: “Crossing bound-
aries, from a familiar space to an alien one which is under the control
of somebody else, can provide anxious moments; in some circumstances
it could be fatal, or might be an exhilarating experience—the thrill of
transgression.”8
Sibley reminds us that transgression is not always appreciated and
for some, may even end up being devastating or debilitating. Similarly,
Shannon Bell writes that, “in many acts of transgression the intent is not
resistance.”9 In Chapter 2, Noa Bronstein examines an instance in which
there is a possibility of forced displacement and unwelcomed transgres-
sion. Bronstein highlights the bellicose spirit of those potentially being
displaced as she posits possible answers to some of the questions Foucault
4 G. BLAIR
asked in his ruminations on transgression in A Preface to Transgression.

Originally written for a 1963 issue of Critique which was dedicated to
its founder, George Bataille, after his recent passing, in A Preface to
Transgression, Foucault wonders about the limit (what we might call the
context, site, or place) and if it can “have a life of its own outside of the
act that gloriously passes through it and negates it? What becomes of it
after this act and what might it have been before?”10 Several chapters in
this anthology analyze the adverse effects of transgression as their writers
wonder about the future of the places and people that are transgressed
against. For example, in Chapter 4, Noni Brynjolson explores the prac-
tices of the artist/activist collective Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and
how they fight for the rights, lives, and place-based histories of those
displaced by a process of urban gentrification in the Bay area of California.
Transgression, in all of its nuanced and subtly manifested forms,
comprises the overarching focus of critique for this text. This project
is an anthology that aims to explore and elucidate the various political
repercussions of spatial transgressions (either through the displacement
of bodies and other entities or the disruption of how we experience
space) in the art world. It is distinctive because it explores two of the
main variants of spatial transgression—displacements and disruptions—
in a fresh and unique manner that reveals both the constructive and
deconstructive nature of displacements and disruptions. These two vari-
ants have also been used to develop an organization and structure for
the text. We have decided to categorize and conceptualize transgression
using these two modes, in order to delineate Parts I and II of this book.
This categorization has been created in a way that has been purposely
left nebulous enough to encompass the divergent manifestations of
transgression presented in each chapter.
Part I: Displacements examines the physical and symbolic movement
or reorientation of bodies, artifacts, objects, and organizations from the
places that they are expected to occupy. The rippling effects of these
displacements are considered for both the displaced and the spaces left
behind. Some of the chapters reveal how people are often coerced into
places they don’t want to be, or as in some cases, places they are
unwelcome as persona non grata. The delineation of space is built upon
exclusion and each of the chapters in Part I considers the tangled web
of conditions and consequences that those exclusions manifest. Often
these geographies of exclusion become so naturalized and normalized
that they can disappear from our consciousness—which is exactly what
the Situationists feared was happening in the Parisian urban sprawl of the
mid twentieth century. This trepidation urged them to find a “new city
through calculated drifting (dérive) through the old. Theirs would be a
city of play, love, adventure, arousing new passions.”11
I often use a personal anecdote to demonstrate how we can easily and
innocently lose our view of the exclusions that exist in place. The story
begins with a student describing a research project they had been working
on, in which they claimed to have captured a full representation of the
population of a small city by surveying people from various religious,
ethnic, social, and age groups that attended classes at the local university.
I asked her if she was worried about excluding the voices of those not
represented by the student body at the university. I clarified that because
of the conceptions and perceptions of the university and the space that
it occupied, certain members of the community may never set foot on
campus—because of distance, stigma, intimidation, economic conditions,
etc.—and therefore would not be represented in her survey. My point of
sharing this story is certainly not to belittle the student or emphasize the
gap in her method, but rather, to demonstrate how we all can become
blind to the exclusions that borders create—similar to what occurs with
other forms of privilege blindness. Part I takes on the topic of spatial
displacements in the arts and the exclusions that they may consciously or
unconsciously create.
Part II: Disruptions leans more toward Gladwell’s vision of subver-
sion and how it can be related to transgression. These chapters and the
artistic practices or aesthetic strategies that they describe, critique the
conventional logic and normalized behaviors that have been established
for the experience and understanding of certain places. Many of these
strategies form radical alternative methodologies that may include trans-
gression, geographies of resistance, or psychogeographies. These spatial
performances of disruption set into motion a critical exchange between
the subject, space, and materiality, in which ideology and experience are
both produced/spatialized and deconstructed/destabilized. Much of the
discourse in this section is also in kinship with Nato Thompson’s Experi-
mental Geography in which “artists [and other cultural producers] either
disrupt given power relations or reveal the power structures that remain
hidden.”12 In doing so, they often attempt to reconfigure aesthetic or
geographical experiences, providing a new type of encounter with place.
A unifying theme that bridges Parts I and II is the concentration
on anthropological space—the human conditions and effects of spatial
6 G. BLAIR
displacements and disruptions. This specific focus is not intended as a

centrism towards the anthropocene. While we recognize the growing
discourse about the agency of place outside of its human inscriptions,
this anthology mostly explores the human relation and transgression of
place. As a whole, this project adheres to geographer Edward Soja’s char-
acterization of place as the “uninterrupted flux of human practice—and
experience thereof—in time and space.”13
Since Soja mentions it here, it may be helpful to pause for a brief
distinction of terms and how they are conceived in this anthology.
Throughout this text, both “space” and “place” are repeatedly used as
central appellations. Both “place” and “space” carry a plethora of mean-
ings. The Oxford English Dictionary lists nineteen different definitions
for the word “place,” an abundance which poses its own set of prob-
lems. Along with “space,” “place” has been an ongoing source of dispute
and conjecture in differing strains of art, philosophy, social science, and
geography. This project heavily draws upon the distinctions between place
and space that Cresswell makes in his book, Place: A Short Introduction.
Cresswell provides a distinction between “space” and “place,” by devoting
a chapter to “work that uses place as an analytical concept that involves
the process of shaping meaning and practice in material space.”14 For
Cresswell, space is more abstract than place, serving as the stuff from
which places with particular meaning emerge. The environmental writer
Lawrence Buell provides a similar differentiation between space and place:
“Place entails spatial location, entails a spatial container of some sort.
But space as against place connotes geometrical or topographical abstrac-
tion, whereas place is ‘space to which meaning has been ascribed.’”15 As
you read through the following chapters, “space” and “place” may some-
times be applied interchangeably, but no matter what word is used, it is
not intended to imply abstract space. Instead, for our usage, both words
denote something similar to Gaston Bachelard’s notion of space that is
made intimate, precious, fetishized, or even comprise an “area of being”
through engagement or experience.16
Whether they emerge as displacements or disruptions, this anthology
brings together “domains of transgression where place, body, group iden-
tity and subjectivity interconnect.”17 Within these displacements and
disruptions one may sense that what is often at stake is the controlling
or concealment of being. In this sense, these displacements and disrup-
tions operate in a similar manner to Heidegger’s aletheia. As an unveiling,
opening, and disclosure, aletheia was used by Heidegger to explain how
being is revealed in time. For Heidegger, aletheia describes how being

becomes unconcealed, and then is soon covered over by the familiar and
mundane, by the everydayness of the world, only to be revealed again
in time as a new understanding of being. Both the spatial displacements
and disruptions included in this anthology explore how these experi-
ences can provide a new understanding of the beings—both alive and
non-sentient—that occupy certain places.
To conclude this introduction and to entice you to read on, I offer a
brief summary of each chapter in the words of each individual author—
mapping the course of this anthology through the terrain of spatial
transgressions in the arts. This text is not meant to be encyclopedic,
but it does provide an overview of the variable permutations of spatial
transgressions in the arts and also provides a sense of the extent to
which transgressions can be politicized—through celebration, coercion,
refutation, and radicalization.
Chapter 2 begins with Noa Bronstein’s From Place-Making to Place-
lessness: How Arts Organizations Attend to Issues of Displacement and
Affordability. Bronstein writes that throughout the chapter, she examines
how arts organizations have long attended to our collective relation-
ships to gentrification, venue displacement, urban sprawl, and concepts of
land valuation and place. These interests compel larger questions around
the ethical and political implications of occupying certain spaces or of
being excluded from them. Given that affordable space to make and
see art is becoming increasingly rare in many cities, these considera-
tions continue to take on a certain level of urgency. As such, Bronstein
considers the conceptual and physical ways in which arts organizations
navigate displacement.
In Chapter 3, Morris Lum focuses on his own artistic practice. Lum
states that: This analysis addresses the evolution of Chinese heritage
within North American communities. As a photographer, Lum maps
immigration patterns of first and second generation Chinese Cana-
dians and Americans. His images document the way cultural identity is
expressed in architecture, which in turn reveals a sense of place for the
Chinese community. The chapter will include an analysis of a photo-
graphic series that Lum has been working on over the last several years
entitled: “Tong Yan Gaai” or Chinatown in Cantonese. Tong Yan Gaai
is a journey taken across America and Canada on a path that was built
by Chinese immigrants. Utilizing a large format camera, Lum searches
for clusters of communities that over time have built Chinatowns for
8 G. BLAIR
the purpose of integration and growth. His aim is to focus and direct
the attention towards the functionality of the Chinatown and explore the
generational context of how the “Chinese” identity is expressed in these
structural enclaves. The work documents the memory and explores the
future of the Chinese community in Canada and the United States.
For the fourth chapter, Noni Brynjolson examines Mapping Evictions:
Urban Displacement and the Myths of the Sharing Economy. Brynjolson
explains that for many large urban centers around the world, processes
of gentrification have been accelerated during the past decade by real-
estate speculation and the development of arts districts and creative city
paradigms. These transformations of urban spaces involve the displace-
ment of low-income people who are pushed out to make room for
new condo buildings and the amenities that typically accompany them:
from coffee shops, to breweries, to art galleries. What happens to the
stories and memories of those who are evicted, and how might these
narratives and cultural practices become part of a broader movement
against displacement? Brynjolson addresses this question by focusing on
the Oakland-based Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a collective of artists
and activists who have produced dozens of interactive, online maps that
visualize displacement, and are accompanied by oral histories. Brynjolson
considers the project in the context of the Bay Area, where histories of
countercultural collectivism and entrepreneurial cyberculture are inter-
twined. This is visible in the aesthetic forms and relational practices of the
sharing economy, in which companies like Airbnb have become extremely
profitable by promising community and social connection. The Anti-
Eviction Mapping Project mimics the networked aesthetics of sharing
economy platforms, but repurposes their designs in order to critique their
promises of collectivism and their material impact on neighborhoods.
The maps and stories produced by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
have been used by community organizations to advocate for rent control
and affordable housing, and in this way, the project suggests possibilities
for art to work against displacement—by using the tools of the sharing
economy against itself. In examining this initiative, Brynjolson consider
how it produces visibility, and how drawing attention to the stories and
cultural practices of displaced individuals and communities can be used as
a radical political tool.
Joshua Hagen begins Chapter 5 by tackling urban historian Donald J.
Olsen observation “that the city, as the largest and most characteristic art
form of the nineteenth century, has something to tell us about the inner
nature of that century.” As Hagen writes, it is this comment that serves

as a starting point for thinking through the recent spate of displacements
and replacements of public monuments, statuary, place names, and other
markers of memory, identity, and belonging that increasingly manifests
on a global scale. If we accept Olsen’s analogy of the city as a work of
art, we can further conceptualize the city as a type of composition. The
idea of “the city as composition” weaves together fundamental concerns
intrinsic across the arts, literature, and geography, including attention
to location, form, proximity, sequence, flow, and diffusion. The city as
composition also frames public spaces as palimpsests; places subject to
continual processes of rewriting, revision, reorganization, and reinter-
pretation that subsequently acquire a sepia patina accumulated through
successive waves of humanity. This perspective centers the role of public
space to serve as a repository of memory, identity, and belonging. Monu-
ments, memorials, and place names are among the most prominent of
the various commemorative markers scattered across the urban landscape,
but on a more banal level, architecture and urban design also texture the
spatiality of memory. Cumulatively, these places of memory and memories
of places condition public discourses and counter discourses and in the
process contour geographies of inclusion, exclusion, and occlusion. This
chapter provides a conceptual framework for thinking through contem-
porary agitation regarding the (re)composition of public space, memory,
identity and belonging, and in doing so, highlights how attention to the
geographies of semiotics, performativity, and affect can tell us something
about the inner nature of this century and the overall human condition.
In Chapter 6, I consider displacements of the body in artistic practice
by examining how some artists have strategically placed certain human
bodies in specific places as political acts. These actions question the status
of those bodies, which are often put in the position of a persona non
grata. By inserting themselves or some other body into a place in which
they are not expected or allowed to be, these artists ask us to question
the conditions and circumstances in which places are made, leading to
certain exclusions and inclusions. By investigating three specific works
of art by Christian Philipp Müller, Santiago Sierra, and Keri Smith, I
expose how these artworks critique the normalization of who is, and who
is not, allowed to be in certain spaces. This revelation notes how these
artworks should be considered critical political acts because they dispute
the status quo of the geopolitics that have been mapped onto places by
human beings. In doing so, these artworks acknowledge how the spatial
10 G. BLAIR
distribution of power is a cultural construct often aimed at benefiting or

controlling a specific group. In a Foucauldian sense, the delineation and
designation of these places is taxonomical—a means of ordering and clas-
sifying space—with the intent of prescribing which bodies are welcome
and which ones are not allowed. These artworks seek to reveal this very
prescription, urging the viewer to reconsider its mutability, validity, and
limitations.
To open Part II: Disruptions, Jessica Thalmann describes how
Chapter 7 is about her own artistic practice as it seeks to destabilize
conventional methods of representation by radically transforming the
ways in which we experience or perceive architecture and the urban
environment. Thalmann’s series Utopos uses both images she has created
herself and archival documents to rethink the meaning of history,
memory, and loss while both disregarding and exalting the irreverence of
monumental Brutalist architecture and photographs. Thalmann reveals
how architectural spaces can be problematized by traumatic histories
involving protests, shootings, and violence. The project is surprisingly
personal in nature, and began by focusing on a shooting that occurred
in 1992 at Concordia University in Montreal where Thalmann’s uncle,
Phoivos Ziogas, was a professor killed during the massacre. To work
through the emotional implications of his death and its reverberations
throughout the family, the images of cold monolithic Brutalist buildings
became distorted, organic, and malleable through the mechanism of
folding, collage, and analog/digital photography. In a more recent series
entitled Isometries, Thalmann focuses her concern on the rise and fall of
buildings in the Toronto landscape. While brick gives way to concrete,
steel, and glass, Thalmann explores how Walter Benjamin’s words “to
dwell is to leave traces” applies more than ever to Toronto. As she reflects
on the cultural and architectural legacy of Toronto’s iconic buildings,
she reveals that through the collection of traces, the debris, the discarded
remnants of the city, we might find clues to, not only the past, but also
the possible futures that the past contained. Toronto reveals itself as a
palimpsest: a collection of layers built up from half-forgotten stories,
hand painted signs, and ruins of Modernist high-rises and bay-and-gable
houses.
Chapter 8 finds Marsya Maharani and Geneviève Wallen reflecting on
their recent, ongoing project Souped Up. Through this chapter they revisit
how the project manifested over the course of the past year, elaborating
on the different iterations and sharing their goals and wishes for this
platform. Souped Up explores communal meals and the creation of long-

term reciprocal caring systems. For each meal the hope is to encourage
community instead of competition amongst racialized arts practitioners
conditioned to have a scarcity mentality, while also contributing to a
supportive ecosystem for co-mentorship, radical friendship, resource-
sharing, and collective governance as primary foundations. Around their
table, there is no need for the maintenance of an over-theorized space,
the guests do not have to be burdened with legitimizing goals. While
mobilizing, they can also just be.
In Chapter 9, Simonetta Moro investigates Mapping as Aesthetic
Practice. Moro writes that she addresses the theme of ‘Transgressive
Geographies’ through the concept of mapping, understood as a new
cartographic aesthetic, or what she calls, a cartoesthetics, in modern
and contemporary art. Moro situates the problem of mapping within
the ‘spatial turn’ of poststructuralist philosophy and current literature
on the ontology of cartography, exposing the nexus between topology,
space-time, and memory. Mapping is thus seen as a new way of concep-
tualizing space-time, informing a variety of aesthetic forms and practices,
with ontological, epistemological, and political import. In particular, this
chapter will touch upon issues such as borders, dislocations, contami-
nations, and displacements, through a couple of examples from recent
international art exhibitions, such as the 57th Venice Biennale and Docu-
menta 14. It is posited that the emergence of ‘mapping’ as a ubiquitous
theme in contemporary art’s discourse is to be attributed to the power
of cartography to constitute a new worldview, paradigmatic of the post-
modern era (rhizomatic, nomadic, horizontal, non-hierarchical, etc.),
bridging the aesthetic, ontological and cognitive fields, and crossing a
variety of disciplines. Moro further argues that artists deliberately decon-
struct the rational appearance of the map to expose the architectonic
of time through duration, which constitutes the space where mapping
occurs, and to disclose new power dynamics at work in an increasingly
borderless world.
Dorothy Barenscott concludes Part II with a consideration of Steve
Wynn and the New Business of Art. This includes how Wynn strategically
transforms various spaces to produce specific experiences for the audi-
ence that engages with those spaces. As Barenscott explains, Steve Wynn,
American businessman, casino magnate, and luxury hotel owner, is also
one of the world’s most prolific art collectors. With a private collection
valued at over half a billion dollars, Wynn has become as famous for
12 G. BLAIR
his art collection as he has for placing many of his most prized works
on full public display in his properties. Most recently, Jeff Koon’s Popeye
(2009–2011), purchased at Sotheby’s for 28 million dollars, became the
centerpiece at Wynn’s signature Encore Resort in Las Vegas, complete
with its own 24-hour guard. This follows a long history of Wynn’s
attempts to attract a new aspirational class of consumers to his art-themed
and art-filled casinos and hotels—places and spaces that seek to impart, as
Pierre Bourdieu would describe, a kind of cultural capital or embodied
“habitus” where one least expects it. Indeed, when Wynn began the
wholesale transformation of the Las Vegas strip in the 1990s, taking the
casino hotel experience from gaudy, rudimentary, and transactional, to
elegant, immersive, and sensational, he would undertake a re-envisioning
of the city’s spatial and sensorial landscape, gambling, quite literally, on
the idea that the placement of his private art collection into the public
spaces and private design sensibilities of his hotels could revolutionize the
Vegas experience. At the core of Barenscott’s analysis, she raises questions
of how, and to what ends, Wynn is using art to create a successful busi-
ness model, bringing us uncomfortably close to the present conditions of
the art world, where esteemed art institutions seek to attract new publics
and re-brand themselves within a shifting global art environment that is
characterized by collapsing distinctions between private and public spaces
and spheres of influence.18
The critical significance and magnitude of the politics of spatial trans-
gressions in the arts emerges when we acknowledge, “space is not a
container for human activities to take place within, but is actively ‘pro-
duced’ through human activity. The spaces humans produce, in turn,
set powerful constraints upon subsequent activity.”19 The chapters in
this anthology detail this process of production and restraint—revealing
the fluctuations in spatial transgressions from thrilling to threatening. In
doing so, this anthology intends to position itself within the discourse
of the larger spatial turn that has unfolded over the last few decades
within the arts, humanities, social sciences, and more specifically, human
geography as detailed in The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
by Barney Warf and Santa Arias, Editors. Additionally, this topic holds
value for scholars of various fields because of the increasing significance
of geographies as part of the current conversation about art, evidenced
by several recent publications including Experimental Geography by Nato
Thompson, Sites Unseen by Trevor Paglen, and Walking and Mapping:
Artists as Cartographers by Karen O’Rourke. This anthology furthers the
discussion and scholarship of spatial/social art practices because it offers

a diverse array of perspectives, insights, and critiques for these significant
subjects within contemporary art discourse.
Notes
1. C. L. Lemert and Garth Gillan, Michel Foucault: Social Theory as
Transgression (Columbia Univ Press, 1982). 68.
2. bell hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge, 2006).
5.
3. Tim Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgres-
sion (Univ of Minnesota Press, 1996). 149.
4. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th edition
(Aunt Lute Books, 2012). Preface.
5. Ibid. 101.
6. Malcolm Gladwell and Ryan Dombal, “Malcolm Gladwell on the Music of
His Life,” Pitchfork, accessed January 15, 2019, https://pitchfork.com/
features/5-10-15-20/malcolm-gladwell-on-the-music-of-his-life/.
7. Red Wedge, Red Wedge #6: In Defense of Transgression (CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2018). 4.
8. David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West
(Routledge, 1995). 32.
9. Red Wedge, Red Wedge #6: In Defense of Transgression (CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2018). 27.
10. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and
Interviews (Cornell University Press, 1977). 34.
11. McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and
Glorious Times of the Situationist International (Verso, 2011). 17.
12. Nato Thompson et al., Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to
Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism (Melville House, 2009). 21.
13. Edward Soja in David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and
Difference in the West (Routledge, 1995). 72.
14. Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004). 81.
15. Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental
Crisis and Literary Imagination (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005). 63.
16. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1st ed. (Beacon Press, 1969). 58.
17. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression
(Cornell University Press, 1986). 25.
18. Written by Dorothy Barenscott.
19. Trevor Paglen in Nato Thompson et al., Experimental Geography: Radical
Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism (Melville House,
2009). 29.
14 G. BLAIR
Bibliography
Anzaldúa, Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th ed. (Aunt Lute
Books, 2012).
Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space, 1st ed. (Beacon Press, 1969).
Buell, Lawrence, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis
and Literary Imagination (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005).
Cresswell, Tim, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression
(Univ of Minnesota Press, 1996).
———, Place: A Short Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004).
Foucault, Michel, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and
Interviews (Cornell University Press, 1977).
Gladwell, Malcolm, and Ryan Dombal, “Malcolm Gladwell on the Music of His
Life,” Pitchfork, accessed January 15, 2019, https://pitchfork.com/features/
5-10-15-20/malcolm-gladwell-on-the-music-of-his-life/.
hooks, bell, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge, 2006).
Lemert, C. L., and Garth Gillan, Michel Foucault: Social Theory as Transgression
(Columbia Univ Press, 1982).
Red Wedge, Red Wedge #6: In Defense of Transgression (CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform, 2018).
Sibley, David, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West
(Routledge, 1995).
Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression
(Cornell University Press, 1986).
Thompson, Nato, et al., Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Land-
scape, Cartography, and Urbanism (Melville House, 2009).
Wark, McKenzie, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious
Times of the Situationist International (Verso, 2011).
PART I
Displacements
CHAPTER 2
From Place-Making to Placelessness: How

Arts Organizations Attend to Issues
of Displacement and Affordability
Noa Bronstein
Lamenting the loss of a neighbourhood’s character or grit seems a partic-

ularly lauded pastime for most urban dwellers. A costly condo goes up and
a small but pricy restaurant replaces the local corner store and suddenly
the taken for granted personality of a place is unsettled, or at least it is
assumed to be. What exactly is it that these kinds of street-level changes
indicate? Why do they matter so much? Who gains and who looses most
when urban priorities are skewed too far in one direction or the other?
These questions have been a source of increasingly urgent concern for
urban-based arts organizations that often share in and are deeply impacted
by gentrification. What follows is a look at one particular case study of
arts displacement and context specific gentrification experienced by the
cultural hub 401 Richmond, located in Toronto, Canada. In order to
unpack this specific case study the issue of arts displacement is filtered
through a spatial justice framework.
N. Bronstein (B)
Toronto, ON, Canada

Switzerland AG 2021
18 N. BRONSTEIN
This chapter is meant to read as a thought experiment on the language

and reasoning that might be applied to the increasingly complicated
discourse around how space is valued and monetized. 401 Richmond
is a shared space and a building that houses several artist-run centres.
In keeping with the ethos behind these organizations, who value trans-
parency, accountability, positionality and different forms of knowledge
production, this chapter is based largely on my own observations and
conversations with colleagues. I have purposefully chosen to focus on
anecdotal “evidence” in order to challenge the very structures in which
discussions around displacement typically transpire.
Case Study: 401 Richmond1

401 Richmond was founded by the Zeidler family in 1994. Under
the leadership of Margie Zeidler, the historic building, once a small-
scale factory in Toronto’s former garment district, has been restored to
provide space to more than 140 microenterprises and arts organizations:
artist-run centres, festivals, theatre companies, supportive arts institutions,
environmental agencies, design firms, commercial galleries, social-service
providers, artist studios, cafes, shops and a daycare among them. Like
many similarly realized adaptive re-uses of industrial spaces, this one was
envisioned as realizing Jane Jacob’s concept that new ideas need old
buildings.
In October of 2016, tenants of 401, myself included as the former
Executive Director of Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photog-
raphy, received hand-delivered notices that spelled out the potential loss
of affordable workspace in Toronto’s downtown core. The Municipal
Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), which calculates commercial
property taxes based on “best and highest use,” determined that 401’s
taxes should correspond to rampant commercial and condo development
in the Richmond and Spadina neighbourhood. This would mean that
Urbanspace, who owns and manages the building, would now be taxed
based on market rents, as opposed to the subsidized rents currently being
collected from tenants. A helpful analogy might be that this situation is
comparable to the government collecting personal income tax based on
the prospect that individuals could be paid as doctors or lawyers rather
than on actual salaries. While the building and tenants had been paying
incremental property tax increases of around two percent annually, this
latest MPAC assessment was unsustainable for the building’s occupants
2 FROM PLACE-MAKING TO PLACELESSNESS … 19
who were suddenly absorbing unexpected rent increases of over $13,000

annually. Given the scales and operating budgets of most organizations in
401 this unanticipated rent increase was not fiscally manageable, especially
because it was only the initial tax increase promised by MPAC.
Concerned that the 2016 MPAC assessment was just the beginning
of a race towards unprecedented valuations and unaffordable property
taxes, the building’s tenants quickly mobilized and started pressuring
the municipal and provincial governments to find a short and long-term
solution that would safeguard 401 from further tax increases and, subse-
quently, higher rents. Interestingly, the City of Toronto rallied behind
401. Councillor Joe Cressy attended several tenant meetings convened to
address this issue and worked closely with Margie Zeidler and the build-
ing’s internal special issues steering committee to rezone 401 and stave
off at least some future tax hikes. Initially, the province of Ontario offered
little support. One possible solution that the tenants pushed for: have the
province adopt a new property tax class that would account for the real-
ities of mixed use and creative spaces. This legislation would safeguard
401 tenants from inflated property tax (and therefore rent), and hopefully
encourage socially engaged development practices that would incentivize
more projects like 401 in the province of Ontario.
The political context that contributed to 401’s taxation issue is rooted
in policies and municipal priorities related to gentrification, property
valuation and local development practices. For this particular context
gentrification is defined as the changing of a neighbourhood due to
an influx of affluent residents and commercial interests and subsequent
increases in real estate values and an outflow of less affluent communities
and business owners. According to Robert Murdie and Carlos Teixeira
“gentrification in inner-city Toronto dates from the late 1960s and early
1970s and now includes much of the city’s central area.”2 Ute Lehrer
and Thorben Wieditz explain that since the 1970s spatial separations
in Toronto based on income levels have created a concentration and
consolidation of prosperous neighbourhoods in the inner city and impov-
erished neighbourhoods in the inner suburbs.3 This trend “can be seen
as the result of what Hackworth (2007) calls the three emerging forms
of a ‘neoliberal spatial fix’: the relationship between (1) continued rapid
suburban growth, (2) a volatile decline and disinvestment in the inner
suburbs, and (3) considerable inner city reinvestment, often in the form
of gentrification.”4 The approval of Toronto’s Central Area Plan in 1976
was a first step in the “reorientation of real estate investments towards the
20 N. BRONSTEIN
city center,” establishing a commitment to “expand Toronto’s finance,

insurance and real estate industries” and “heralded Toronto’s process of
‘going global.’”5 These political bents have continued more recently as
urban planning in Toronto has “actively contributed to the construction
of a ‘competitive city’: new planning regulations at both the municipal
and provincial level have been created which focus on increasing Toron-
to’s economic attractiveness on a global scale, supplemented by an array
of social, cultural, ecological and other place specific assets.”6 Govern-
ment policy and Richard Florida’s amplified influence in Toronto have
facilitated ongoing gentrification vis-à-vis a sustained focus on: attracting
and retaining international investors, the “creative class” and new middle
class; utilizing targeted neighbourhoods in the marketing of desirable arts
and cultural districts; and larger developments gaining traction through
an increasingly globalized real estate industry.7 It is no surprise then that
property value and tax has increased drastically in many of Toronto’s
neighbourhoods, including the ward in which 401 is located.
MPAC’s tax calculation, based on the “best and highest use,” over-
looks the fact that 401 already operates at its best and highest use. 401
is certainly not a utopic space. It lacks total accessibility and, as every-
where, tensions do arise between tenants and the landlord. For the most
part, however, it fosters a profound sense of camaraderie. At its best and
highest use, 401 functions like an intimate neighbourhood. The kind of
neighbourhood where furniture, installation materials or equipment is left
out and ends up being re-used by a neighbour. Or the kind where, if you
need a proverbial cup of sugar (in this case technical advice or help with
a grant), you can ask next door and be sure to get help.
Co-habitation creates many possibilities that foster artistic resiliency
and knowledge sharing. As Deirdre Logue, development director at the
video art distribution and programming centre Vtape, says, “intense
mutual investments and productive co-dependence are fundamental to
many of the arts organizations in 401, and the building itself reinforces
these values.” Collaborative projects, of which there are copious exam-
ples, often materialize by way of accidental and organic cross-pollination,
through the very human interactions that take place in the building—
picking up kids from childcare, waiting in line for the washroom, getting
a coffee and so on. One example is the reciprocal membership program
between Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and Trinity
Square Video, which was initiated through casual, in-passing conversa-
tions in the building’s shared spaces. Another similar example is that of
video artist Deidre Logue’s sprawling solo exhibition (2017) that took
place across Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Tangled
Art+ Disability and Aspace Gallery in collaboration with the Images
Festival. This too evolved out of less formal relationships and conver-
sations between all the 401-based institutions. In many ways, 401 shares
a likeness to the Salk Institute. Scientists working in Louis Kahn’s iconic
building have remarked that the architecture shapes their work because
generous stairwells and other interstitial spaces create conditions for acci-
dental dialogue and togetherness. This is also the case in 401, in which
social alchemy is forged by way of proximity to partners and peers and
a building plan that promotes informal gatherings. This kind of spatial
sharing further assists artists in securing meaningful professional develop-
ment. When interviewed for this article several cultural workers, including
Aidan Cowling and Sally Lee, credited 401’s supportive networks with
helping them move between different organizations and roles within the
building.
“The building was so key to my entry into the Toronto art world,”
artist Michèle Pearson Clarke explains. She recalls that volunteering with
Inside Out LGBT Film Festival and spending time in 401 helped her enter
other institutions and galleries. The welcome she received at Inside Out
led to exhibiting with the media-arts focused artist-run centre, Trinity
Square Video, which created more opportunities. As Clarke notes, the
building’s shared audiences, stakeholders, patrons and communities mean
that artists can more easily navigate through the art world, which can
otherwise be unreceptive and inaccessible. As she notes, “What 401 did
for me was allow me to give myself permission to make work as a black,
queer, immigrant person, who didn’t go to art school and didn’t go to
film school.”
Multi-disciplinary artist Hiba Abdallah shares a similar sentiment about
the building. She recalls that:
My relationship with 401 started before I even lived in Toronto. I

remember learning about the space in one of my undergraduate classes
– it was presented as an example of what a physical space for an artist run
community could look like. This was over a decade ago, and still today
it remains an important building that houses a huge network of our artist
culture. This year (2019) I participated for the first time in a show at 401 at
Trinity Square Video. I found myself in amazement at the endless connec-
tions between artists that I have known for a long time and new ones I
22 N. BRONSTEIN
was just meeting – they all collided in that building. For a space that has
consistently supported and brought together as many cultural practitioners
as 401 Richmond has, it needs to be protected.
Adding to the chorus of voices on the significance of 401, community

organizer and cultural worker Britt Welter-Nolan describes the building
this way: “There are nascent projects and fledgling ideas that are vitally
important to our city, and though they may not be fully formed, they
need an environment that supports their growth. The Zeidler family,
with their sensitive and collaborative vision for urbanism, have supported
these nurturing environments that defy categorization and have enabled
creative economies to exist.”
One of the primary issues that MPAC’s 2016 assessment of 401
brought to the fore is that if tenants, all publicly funded non-profits
and charitable organizations, vacated the building, it would be at the
expense of taxpayer dollars. Renowned organizations Vtape, imagineNA-
TIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, South Asian Visual Arts Centre
(SAVAC), Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and FADO
Performance Art Centre recently pooled their resources to jointly secure
a long-term lease and to renovate a 7500-square-foot space on the 4th
floor of 401 that includes offices, classrooms, a screening room and a
research centre. Costing close to $1,000,000—mostly fundraised through
public grants—the project was intended to leverage resources across
several organizations to create security and long-term capacity building.
Major renovations and capital improvements have been made in 401 by
numerous additional organizations with long-term leases including Open
Studio, A Space Gallery and Trinity Square Video. All of these projects
have been made possible through municipal and provincial funding. At
risk of becoming unstable undertakings, these particular tenants repeat-
edly tasked the Toronto and Ontario government to account for how
they could so easily default on their own investments and gamble with
their constituents’ assets.
Due to the unexpected rent increases several organizations within 401
had considered layoffs and program cuts, while others were forced into
making difficult budgetary decisions involving staffing and community
engagement. At the height of the uncertainty over whether or not the
tenants could find a solution to the taxation issue several discussions
were had regarding the importance of place that the building provides.
Jennifer Bhogal, former Executive Director of the print focused artist-

run centre Open Studio, noted that moving to a different building
might mean that the organization’s members could lose an accommo-
dating, centrally located and public transit-accessible studio—a lifeline
to emotional support, income generation and mental health for many
people. South Asian Visual Arts Centre’s Executive Director, Indu
Vashist, similarly expressed concern about smaller non-profits and arts
organizations continuing to be pushed further out of the city and away
from their publics. At Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
digital and analogue facilities also function as a safe space for storytelling
and self-representation for underserved communities, including numerous
youth-focused arts and social justice organizations. Gallery 44 feared that
moving might destabilize these relationships that have been carefully built
over time and, at least to a certain extent, tied to a location and a sense
of place.
“Though the immediate urgency is the tax issue, the larger question
remains as to how the city relates with its marginalized communities and
sectors—be it social housing or affordable artist’s studio space and rental
spaces for not-for-profit organizations and small businesses,” says Zainub
Verjee, the Executive Director of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries.
“These not-for-profit organizations are already under immense stress and
this [tax] proposition will be the proverbial last nail into many of these
organizations’ ability to survive.” As it happened, this was not entirely
the case. Verjee was correct in pointing out the complexity at the core
of this matter, but rather than this being the final chapter for 401 the
tenants did manage to influence the city and province in adopting a new
tax class for creative hubs. For now, cultural advocacy for how cities are
designed—and what kinds of places and sectors are protected—proved
successful.
The case study of 401 is not entirely unique. It is a recognizable
problem, a scenario known all too well through the many incarnations
that gentrification takes on a local, national and international scale. In
effect, 401 helped to create a more vibrant and commercially viable
district and in so doing (almost) priced itself out of its own neigh-
bourhood. This common cycle of art driving up real estate value which
ultimately drives out art and artists has become a predictable and expected
outcome of the urban condition. What 401 demonstrates specifically is
that every loss of affordable living and working spaces indicates a shift
in civic priorities. Artists and cultural workers tend to serve as society’s
24 N. BRONSTEIN
coalmine canaries. An unstable arts ecology can signal wider political

symptoms of distress. Taking our current political pulse through case
studies such as 401 can provide a productive opportunity to address larger
issues around spatial justice and cultural production.
Spatial Justice
Spatial justice emerged in the early 2000s as a critical concept that helped
to illustrate the need for more socio-spatial thinking in regards to urban
planning and design, academia and advocacy work. As the term implies,
spatial justice acknowledges the connection between space and justice
as integral to understanding how we arrive at our relationships. Spatial
justice recognizes that how space is organized reflects social realities and
injustices that profoundly impact on our lived experiences. Conceptu-
ally, spatial (in)justice is made evident through many concerns, including
geographically uneven development; gerrymandering electoral districts;
locational discrimination created through biases imposed on certain popu-
lations; redlining and ‘gray urbanism’ in which particular communities are
denied full membership in politics and resource sharing. In other words,
“space is not an empty void. It is always filled with politics, ideology, and
other forces shaping our lives and challenging us to engage in struggles
over geography.”8
Rooted in theoretical foundations dating to the late 1960s and 1970s,
including Henri Lefebvre’s writing on the ‘right to the city,’ spatial justice
is strongly associated with environmental and food justice and socially
located discourses related to democracy, citizenship and sovereignty.
Edward W. Soja, a key figure in developing the concept, states that:
As both outcome and process, seeking spatial justice can be studied at

multiple scales and in many different social contexts. Stretching the concept
to its maximum scope, we can speak of unjust geographies involving the
human body, as in debates about abortion, obesity, stem cell research, the
transplantation of body parts, sexual practice, or the external manipulation
of individual behavior. At the other extreme, the physical geography of
the planet is filled with spatially defined environmental injustices, some of
which are now being aggravated by the uneven geographical impact of
social produced climate change and global warming. These two extremes,
the corporeal body and the physical planet, usefully define the outer limits
of the concept of spatial (in)justice and the struggle over geography…9
Although not speaking directly to this topic, Linda Tuhiwai Smith

frames space in a useful way that echoes back to discourses related
to spatial justice and to the many ways we conceive of space more
generally. She explains that concepts of space are “articulated through
the ways in which people arrange their homes and towns, collected
and displayed objects of significance, organized warfare, set out agricul-
tural fields and arranged gardens, conducted business, displayed art and
performed drama, separate out one form of human activity from another.
Spatial arrangements are an important part of social life. Western classifica-
tions of space include notions such as architectural space, physical space,
psychological space, theoretical space and so forth.”10 Tuhiwai Smith’s
quote makes clear that space has many permutations and our relationships
to these are produced and reproduced culturally and socially.
More recent invocations of the right to the city posit a more equally
distributed claim to co-creating space and to shaping the city to many
needs rather than to a select few. Mark Purcell explains: “the goal [of
the right to the city] is to encourage urban policies that promote justice,
sustainability, and inclusion in cities.”11 He further states:
Most agree that it is the everyday experience of inhabiting the city that
entitles one to a right to the city, rather than one’s nation-state citizenship.
As a result, most also emphasize the importance of the use value of urban
space over and above its exchange value. Currently, in almost every city
in the world, the property rights of owners outweigh the use rights of
inhabitants, and the exchange value of property determines how it is used
much more so than its use value. And so in almost all its forms the right
to the city is understood to be a struggle to augment the rights of urban
inhabitants against the property rights of owners.12
Spatial justice is a useful conceptual tool from which to consider the

realities of arts-based displacement. When artists and arts institutions are
displaced due to economic, social and political forces that weaken artistic
resiliency what is at stake is the right to the city. Here I do not necessarily
mean the city per se, but rather an expansive employment of this concept
translating to the right to be able to co-create, access and shape space,
place and cultural geographies. As I discuss above, this right to the city
for arts institutions can include access to:
26 N. BRONSTEIN
• Density: Being able to leverage location in order to serve broad

publics and numerous distinct communities.
• Proximity: Being able to work and produce alongside peers and
colleagues in order to foster resource sharing, collaboration and
mutual support.
• Transportation: Being able to operate along major public transit
routes in order to ensure accessibility.
401 illustrates that the right to city and to seeking spatial justice is also
a matter of, not just the right to exist but, the right to persist. Devel-
opment practices, government policies and privatized and capitalist civic
priorities often conflict with ensuring that arts institutions can fully partic-
ipate as public actors in the spaces they occupy. When arts institutions
are not able to put down roots, invest in infrastructure or to fulsomely
act as neighbourhood stewards the ramifications are significant. This
mode of displacement re-enforces precarity and vulnerability. Anectodatly,
it is perhaps not surprising that smaller, grassroots arts organizations
and non-profits are immersed in similar struggles for spatial justice as
many equity-seeking communities and individuals. This is certainly due
to the fact that grassroots organizations and equity-seeking communities
have historically been co-committed to redressing socio-political power
imbalances.
Within 401, a commonly held concern about the potential loss of
affordable working space in the downtown core (inner city) of Toronto
relates to community experiences and choice. If artist-run centres and
differently scaled organizations are not able to inhabit centrally located
spaces, then the results are homogenous urban geographies. In Toronto,
for instance, limited programing space and real estate prices remaining
unchecked could result in exclusively monolithic cultural institutions
being able to afford to remain in the city centre. This matters, in part,
because larger cultural institutions are typically not able to be as nimble,
improvisational, adaptive or malleable as smaller organizations. While an
artist-run centre has the dexterity to program quickly and shape shift to
current political moments and social movements in need of immediate
address, larger institutions tend to be mired in slow-moving bureaucracy.
For the purposes of this context, larger or conventional arts institu-
tions are meant to generally include museums or galleries with blue
chip collections and exhibitions, operating budgets in the millions (as

opposed to thousands or hundreds of thousands) and possible academic
or government affiliation. Artist-run centres, or what I will call smaller
organizations, are meant to encompass independent organizations with
restricted budgets and a focus on emerging and underrepresented artists
and alternative and experimental art forms.
Artist-run centres, or similarly positioned institutions, were founded
specifically to address some of the failings entrenched in traditional art
museums and galleries. These failings can include: privileging heteronor-
mative content delivery methods; prioritizing white male artists; operating
at scales that run counter to responsive programming models; adopting
capitalist frameworks that perpetuate the commodification of culture; and
drawing arbitrary distinctions between emerging and established artists
and professional and community-based art. This is not to say that tradi-
tional art museums and galleries do not serve an important function but
it is to say that the particular approach taken by these institutions needs
to be balanced within a robust and diverse arts ecology that amplifies
many voices, lived experiences and curatorial and pedagogical frame-
works. Sarah Shulman explains in The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness
to a Lost Imagination that “real artists–people who invent instead of
replicate–need counterculture as a playing field.”13 She further explains
that the “tight fist of prevailing institutions” can stymy the founda-
tional conditions that encourage artistic production, namely–“freedom,
oppositionality, imagination, rebellion, and interaction with difference.”14
Before I go on, there are serious risks to this line of thinking that needs
to be addressed. Firstly, there is a danger here in fetishizing urban space to
the point of presuming that arts institutions cannot thrive or find allied
audiences when located in suburban or rural settings. This is certainly
not the case. Urban sites and arts institutions, however, have historically
supported one another in generating and cultivating artistic possibility
and origination, which should not be overlooked. Secondly, focusing on
the importance of the arts within urban contexts can read as Richard
Florida-esque. While Richard Florida maintains that it is important to
sustain artistic production in urban areas because the sector reinforces
positive economic impacts, I am arguing that the value proposition of
spaces such as 401 and small-scale arts organizations is not economic or
monetary. As previously mentioned, the “best and highest use” of spaces
such as 401 is rooted in supporting diverse artistic practices, collabo-
ration, cultural reciprocity and communal resource sharing. Looking to
28 N. BRONSTEIN
Purcell again, 401 demonstrates “the use value of urban space over and
above its exchange value.”15 Surely the arts cannot be separated out from
wider market conditions but the impact of the arts is social not merely
commercial. Finally, it is essential to note that many small arts-based
organizations are complicit in creating the conditions that encourage
gentrification and that displace more vulnerable populations. This is not
excusable or justifiable but does articulate the complications of occupying
certain spaces, wherein some public actors may be both the displacer and
the displaced. This chapter is clearly attuned to a particular dimension of
this complicated reality, which is admittedly a limitation of focused case
studies such as this one.
It could be argued that grassroots organizations are more often able to
truly reflect the community they serve for several reasons. One of these is
that small staffing models create opportunities for artists and community
members to directly interface and converse with decision-makers. Whereas
within larger cultural spaces the opportunity for a direct audience with
a CEO, director or senior curator is rare or highly unlikely unless you
happen to be an internationally-renowned artist or high-level donor. I
have seen the importance of inter-connectedness at Gallery 44 Centre for
Contemporary Photography many times. Leaders within Gallery 44 are
also, out of necessity, called on to answer the phone, set-up for a program
or tend to administrative tasks. This blurring of distinction between back
and front of house creates a certain level of transparency that dimin-
ishes barriers between those managing the institution and members of the
public. Direct access allows cultural workers to build trust with commu-
nity members and to be held accountable to many different stakeholders
precisely because they know who these stakeholders are. Another reason
that artist-run centres can more readily meet community need is that in
Canada these non-profits take risks and offer radical, oppositional and
challenging programs in-concert with community interests because they
are publically funded and therefore less reliant than larger organizations
are on conservative donors and risk-averse corporate sponsors.
Certainly, there are many large institutions that challenge their own
privilege and many smaller ones that have professionalized to the point of
no longer maintaining a community-focused mandate. For the most part,
however, substantial differences in scale and scope continue to demar-
cate cultural institutions from one another. Differentiating institutional
strengths and values is constructive in highlighting why it is that the
displacement of small-scale arts organizations registers significantly on the
urban landscape. Arguably, city centres that exclusively accommodate one

typology of cultural institution fail to offer the public and artists them-
selves a multiplicity of experiences and different levels of engagement with
cultural institutions. To put it another way, we might consider the paral-
lels between food justice and art justice. Aside from issues pertaining to
food deserts, it might be fair to say that a spatially uneven urban envi-
ronment would be one filled with box stores while being devoid of access
to religiously appropriate foods (Halal and Kosher foods for example),
locally owned restaurants offering different price points or corner grocery
stores that carry culturally specific options. These kinds of diverse selec-
tions ensure that space is held for many different needs, tastes and cultural
appetites. Although art meets indirect human needs as compared with
food, variety in both supports diversity within the cityscape.
“In the broadest sense, spatial (in)justice refers to an intentional
and focused emphasis on the spatial or geographical aspects of justice
and injustice. As a starting point, this involves the fair and equitable
distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportuni-
ties to use them.”16 Supplanting emerging artists, alternative forms of
artistic production and politicized and subversive practices easily pivots us
towards a uniform arts ecosystem that unevenly dispenses with cultural
assets and sanitizes cultural consumption. Ultimately, spatial shifts that
displace certain arts-based organizations reinforce uneven geographies
and the imbalanced distribution of immaterial needs.
Conclusion
Spatial configurations that displace vulnerable arts institutions can create
uniform public spaces through which the distribution of immaterial social
resources becomes polarized. This kind of displacement is not a natural
condition of the urban environment but rather a systemic issue that
overtly values commerce over community. By applying a spatial justice
framework to case studies such as 401 Richmond we might be able
to repeal the value propositions that inform urban planning and to re-
articulate the importance of arts-based place-making. Spatial justice helps
to clarify the need for inclusionary practices within city centres which,
to return to Shulman, defend “freedom, oppositionality, imagination,
rebellion, and interaction with difference.”17
30 N. BRONSTEIN
Notes
1. This section of the article first appeared in Canadian Art on-line on July
27, 2017, the interviews for this article took place throughout May, June
and July of 2017.
2. Robert Murdie and Carlos Teixeira, “The Impact of Gentrification on
Ethnic Neighbourhoods in Toronto: A Case Study of Little Portugal,”
Urban Studies 48, no. 1 (2011), 67.
3. Ute Lehrer and Thorben Wieditz, “Condominium Development and
Gentrification: The Relationship Between Policies, Building Activities and
Socio-economic Development in Toronto,” Canadian Journal of Urban
Research 18, no. 1 (2009), 83.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 86.
6. Ute Lehrer and Jennefer Laidley, “Old Mega-Projects Newly Packaged?
Waterfront Redevelopment in Toronto,” International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research (2009), 790.
7. Ute Lehrer and Thorben Wieditz, “Condominium Development and
Gentrification: The Relationship Between Policies, Building Activities and
Socio-economic Development in Toronto,” Canadian Journal of Urban
Research 18, no. 1 (2009), 85.
8. Edward W. Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice (Minnesota: Minnesota University
Press, 2010), 19.
9. Ibid., 22.
10. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonializing Methodologies: Research and Indige-
nous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012), 53.
11. Mark Purcell, “Possible Worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the
City,” Journal of Urban Affairs 36, no. 1 (2013), 141.
12. Ibid., 142.
13. Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost
Imagination (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 83.
14. Ibid., 82.
15. Mark Purcell, “Possible Worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the
City,” Journal of Urban Affairs 36, no. 1 (2013), 141.
16. Edward W. Soja, “The City and Spatial Justice,” Justice Spatiale|Spatial
Justice, no. 2 (2009), 2.
17. Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost
Imagination (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 82.
References
Lehrer, Ute and Jennefer Laidley, “Old Mega-Projects Newly Packaged? Water-
front Redevelopment in Toronto,” International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 32, no. 4 (2009), 786–803.
Lehrer, Ute and Thorben Wieditz, “Condominium Development and Gentri-
fication: The Relationship Between Policies, Building Activities and Socio-
Economic Development in Toronto,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research
18, no. 1 (2009), 82–103.
Murdie, Robert and Carlos Teixeira, “The Impact of Gentrification on Ethnic
Neighbourhoods in Toronto: A Case Study of Little Portugal,” Urban Studies
48, no. 1 (2011), 67.
Purcell, Mark, “Possible Worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the City,”
Journal of Urban Affairs 36, no. 1 (2013), 141–154.
Schulman, Sarah, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013).
Soja, Edward W., Seeking Spatial Justice (Minnesota: Minnesota University Press,
2010).
Soja, Edward W., “The City and Spatial Justice,” Justice Spatiale|Spatial Justice,
no. 2 (2009), 1–8.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, Decolonializing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012).
CHAPTER 3
Tong Yan Gaai: Redefining Racialized Spaces
Morris Lum
Introduction
Over the years I’ve had to adjust, adopt, and change the way that I
research, investigate, and interpret Chinatowns. Since 2012, I have been
searching for clusters of Chinatown communities that have been built
across Canada and the United States for the purpose of settlement and
growth. My aim is to focus and direct attention towards the functionality
of Chinatowns and to explore the generational context of how “Chi-
nese” identity is expressed in these structural enclaves. Armed with a large
format camera, I have documented Chinatowns in Victoria, Vancouver,
Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. I have often traveled
back and forth to these Chinatowns to record the rapid architectural and
economic changes that these communities have been facing. The images
are visual records of dynamic cityscapes in which I highlight historical
and contemporary cultural fixtures such as small mom-and-pop shops,
Chinese restaurants, and community organizations. In this chapter, I will
discuss several key images that help explain my practice more generally.
I approach this chapter as a portfolio of sorts, wherein I move from
M. Lum (B)
Mississauga, ON, Canada

Switzerland AG 2021
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Tamarisken bewachsene Dünen wie Inseln hervortraten. Es war eine
Zwischenstufe zwischen einem alten und einem neuen Bette, und
tatsächlich sollte es auch erst acht Jahre alt sein. Der Tarim
verändert also seine Lage, aber nur auf kurzen Strecken seines
Laufes, und es ist interessant zu beobachten, daß wir die alten,
verlassenen Flußbettstücke beinahe immer im Norden liegen lassen
oder, mit anderen Worten, daß der Fluß nach rechts wandert. Daß
an dem neuen Flußbette kein Pappelwald steht, ist natürlich, denn er
hat noch nicht aufsprießen können. Doch an den verlassenen
Strecken steht er dicht und üppig, obgleich er dort gewöhnlich zum
Untergange verdammt ist, wenn das Wasser sich zurückgezogen
hat.
Was dazu beitrug, die Einförmigkeit an Bord zu unterbrechen,
waren die plötzlichen Einfälle der Hunde. Sie pflegten ins Wasser zu
springen, an Land zu schwimmen und dann die Fähre am Ufer
ganze Tagereisen zu begleiten. Was sie jedoch nie begreifen lernen
konnten, waren die sich regelmäßig wiederholende Topographie des
Flusses und seine Erosionsgesetze. Wenn die Fähre an einem
konkaven Ufer entlang ging, liefen sie oberhalb des Zeltes nebenher;
wenn dann aber die Wassermasse das Bett kreuzte, um am anderen
Ufer einen ebensolchen Bogen zu beschreiben, schwammen sie
hinüber, um wieder in unserer unmittelbaren Nähe zu sein. Dieses
Manöver wiederholte sich überflüssigerweise bei jeder Biegung, und
es war unmöglich, ihnen begreiflich zu machen, daß, wenn sie nur
warteten, wir bald wieder an ihr Ufer zurückkehren würden. An
einigen Tagen kreuzten sie den Fluß zwanzigmal und waren
schließlich so erschöpft, daß sie heulten. Jolldasch war lustig
anzusehen, wenn er im Wasser plätscherte, nach Atem rang und
nach jedem kalten Schluck hustete.
Bei I n i t s c h k e hatte der Fluß 80,6 Kubikmeter Wasser in der
Sekunde, und es war deutlich zu sehen, daß er allmählich stieg — in
einer Nacht um 5 Zentimeter. Diese letzte Messung erforderte
dreistündige Arbeit bei Laternenschein. Der Fluß war zu breit, als
daß wir, wie sonst, ein Tau von Ufer zu Ufer hätten spannen und das
Boot an den Messungspunkten daran festbinden können. Die
Strömung, die bis zu 86 Meter in der Minute betrug, war auch viel zu
reißend, als daß sich das Tau überhaupt hätte hineinbringen lassen.
Ich versuchte freilich, damit hinüberzurudern, doch gelang es mir
nicht. Statt dessen wurde ein dünner, mit weißen Knoten eingeteilter
Bindfaden von Ufer zu Ufer gespannt und an jedem Knoten die Jolle
verankert.
In der Nacht auf den 5. November stieg der Fluß noch um 2
Zentimeter. Der Tarim fließt jetzt wieder nach Nordost. Auf einer
sandigen Alluvialhalbinsel bei Hässemet-tokai saßen zwölf
dunkelgraubraune, fast schwarze Geier, gewaltige, plumpe Vögel,
die uns ruhig betrachteten und nur die Köpfe wie Sonnenblumen
drehten, während die Fähre um ihre Landzunge herumfuhr. Sie
hatten sich hier bei dem Kadaver eines Pferdes
zusammengefunden. Die Geier waren entschieden satt; sie saßen in
Gruppen in einiger Entfernung von dem Kadaver, schienen zu
verdauen und ließen sich von einigen dreisten Raben Gesellschaft
leisten. Etwas weiter unten passierten wir wohl 40 Geier, die auf den
dürren Zweigen abgestorbener Pappeln thronten; sie saßen wie
Höllengeister oder Todesdämonen in dem struppigen Walde da, und
die Umgebung paßte gut zu ihrer unheimlichen Erscheinung.
Da war es angenehmer, den endlosen Karawanen der
Wildgänse, die noch immer nach Westen zogen und aus Scharen
von 80–100 Vögeln bestanden, mit den Blicken zu folgen. Sie fliegen
in den feinsten Drachen- oder Pfeilspitzen, von denen gewöhnlich
ein Flügel sehr lang und der andere kürzer ist. Stets sieht man an
der Spitze einen Führer, der geradeaus fliegt und nie über die
einzuschlagende Richtung unschlüssig zu sein scheint, während die
Flügel, den Bewegungen des Führers entsprechend, hin und her
wogen wie zwei im Winde flatternde Blätter.
Charakteristisch für diesen Teil des Tarimlaufes war auch die
Menge des steckengebliebenen Treibholzes und der auf Grund
geratenen Pappelstämme. Viele von diesen gehen mit der Zeit unter,
andere befinden sich in einem Stadium abnehmender Tragkraft. Nur
das eine Ende ist untergegangen, während das andere noch in der
Richtung der Strömung liegt und nickend über der Oberfläche auf
und nieder steigt. Oft sah ein solcher Pappelstumpf wie eine auf uns
zuschwimmende Seeschlange aus. Doch nur das um das Hindernis
herum kochende Wasser täuschte das Auge; wir waren es, die sich
näherten und darüber hinwegglitten, während der Stumpf wie ein
Wasserkobold gegen den Boden der Fähre schlug.
Aus dem Hirtengehöfte B o s t a n nahmen wir am 6. November
einen neuen Cicerone, einen Jäger, mit, aber Mollah Faisullah durfte
trotzdem bei uns bleiben, denn er war lustig und heiter und las den
anderen vor von den Taten und Leiden der Helden und von
sagenhaften Städten mit tausend Toren und tausend Wächtern an
jedem Tore. Die Bewohner von Bostan wollten uns Melonen
schenken, wir nahmen sie aber nicht an, da solche Delikatessen
jetzt nachts gefrieren. Dagegen ließen wir uns einen großen weißen
Hahn gefallen, der kaum an Bord gebracht war, als er auch schon
auf den alten Hahn losfuhr und ihn über Bord drängte. Da der neue
Passagier entschieden alleiniger Herr im Hause sein wollte, mußte
mein bisheriger Morgenwecker von Kasim in Obhut genommen
werden. Von nun an waren sie die besten Freunde — aus der Ferne;
krähte der eine, so antwortete der andere sogleich; es klang ganz
ländlich.
In K a r a - d a s c h i , dem Lager vom 6. November, waren wir dicht
bei dem Punkte, wo wir nach dem gefährlichen Zuge durch die
Wüste nördlich vom Kerija-darja im Jahre 1896 zuerst Wasser
gefunden hatten.
7. November. Daß wir uns bevölkerten Gegenden näherten, sah
man daran, daß hier und da Schilfhütten und sogar Lehmhäuser
vorkamen und an den Ufern nicht selten Kähne angebunden lagen.
Diese ähnelten immer mehr dem Lop-nor-Typus; sie waren aus einer
einzigen Pappel ausgehauene, langgestreckte, schmale Fahrzeuge,
die sich von den Lop-nor-Kähnen dadurch unterschieden, daß der
Vorderrand in eine Art von durchbohrtem Handgriffe mit einer Leine
auslief und das Hinterteil eine kleine Plattform, einen Sitzplatz,
bildete (Abb. 37). Das Ruder ist schaufelförmig.
Die Fährleute nahmen einen kleinen Kahn in Beschlag. Alim
führte eine förmliche Wasserpantomime auf mit seinen verzweifelten
Versuchen, des Bootes Herr zu werden; wie er auch ruderte, er
konnte es nicht dazu bringen, gerade vorwärtszugehen, war aber
desto öfter nahe daran, zu kentern. Bei Tschong-aral wurde das Boot
gegen ein größeres vertauscht. Es war nicht unsere Absicht, den
Kahn zu stehlen und so die friedlichen Ufer zu brandschatzen, wir
bezahlten ihn vielmehr noch an demselben Abend. Islam und Mollah
trieben nun in dem Kahne, und die Flottille hatte sich also um ein
Fahrzeug vergrößert.
In der Gegend von G ä d s c h i s mündet links ein Arm des Schah-
jar-darja (Mus-art), der vom Chan-tengri kommt. Er ist in der
Mündung 29 Meter breit, und, soweit das Auge flußaufwärts reicht,
sieht es nicht aus, als ob diese Breite sich verminderte. Das Bett war
mit stillstehendem Wasser von 78 Zentimeter Durchsichtigkeit gefüllt,
während das des Tarim nur bis 4 Zentimeter durchsichtig war. Das
Wasser hatte infolgedessen eine herrliche rein blaue Farbe, und die
Grenze war ziemlich scharf.
Während ich damit beschäftigt war, den Arm von der Jolle aus zu
untersuchen, erschien der Joll-begi von Tschimen, ein alter Mann in
veilchenblauem Tschapan. Er brachte Briefe von Nias Hadschi und
den Kosaken mit, die uns mitteilten, daß es der Karawane gut gehe.
Bei dem Dorfe Te r e s erwarteten mich am Ufer eine Menge
Geschenke, wie Schafe, Früchte, zwei Kisten Birnen aus Kutschar,
eine mit Granatäpfeln, ferner Hasen, Fasanen, Hühner, Eier und
Milch, kurz eine willkommene Verstärkung des Proviants. Unser
Transportmittel hat vor Kamelen den Vorzug, daß es nie knurrt, wenn
man ihm auch noch soviel aufpackt; es geht darum doch ebenso
weit und ebenso gut.
Wir lagerten an dem Punkte, wo der Weg von Kara-dasch und
Kungartschak-bel nach Tschimen, Schah-jar und Kutschar über den
Fluß führt. Es war genau dieselbe Stelle, wo wir 1896 den
zugefrorenen Fluß kreuzten. Chalil Bai, der alte Ehrenmann, in
dessen Hause ich damals zu Gaste war, kam mir, auf einen Stock
gestützt, trotz seiner 73 Jahre entgegen. Es ist stets ein großes
Vergnügen, alte Freunde wiederzusehen; es ist ein Band, das
wiederangeknüpft wird. Ich saß lange mit dem Alten in gemütlicher
Unterhaltung am Feuer.
37. Kähne auf dem mittelsten Tarim. (S. 96.)
38. Der See Koral-dungning-köll. (S. 105.)

39. Der Jumalak-darja von Koral-dung aus gesehen. (S. 105.)
40. Besuch des Beks von Schah-jar in Tschimen. (S. 97.)
Während der zwei Rasttage, die wir am Ufer von Ts c h i m e n

zubrachten, wurde wie gewöhnlich eine astronomische
Ortsbestimmung nebst verschiedenen Nacharbeiten ausgeführt und
der Fluß gemessen. Hier fand uns Abdurahman, der erste Dschigit
aus Kaschgar; er hatte in seiner versiegelten Posttasche lauter gute
Nachrichten. Er nahm meine Post und außerdem noch einen
hermetisch verlöteten Blechkasten mit Negativen mit nach Kaschgar
zurück. Ein neuer Jäger wurde angenommen und ein Vorrat von Öl
gekauft, für den Fall, daß nächtliche Fahrten mit Fackeln in Frage
kommen würden.
Der 10. November war der erste wirkliche Wintertag. Der Morgen
war bitterkalt, feuchter Nebel lag über der Erde und verteilte sich erst
unter dem recht scharfen Südwestwinde, der sich jetzt erhob und
unsere Fahrt sehr beschleunigte. Der Boden war weiß bereift, und
auch die Fähre und die schwarze Kajüte waren weiß. Die Luft war
grau und neblig, der Himmel mit Wolken bedeckt, und die ganze
Landschaft mit blauweißen, winterkalten Tinten gefärbt.
Noch um 10 Uhr vormittags hatten wir −2 Grad und nachmittags
um 5 Uhr wieder −1 Grad; nur fünf Stunden erhob sich die
Quecksilbersäule ein wenig über den Nullpunkt. Das waren trübe
Aussichten, denn wenn der Fluß jetzt zuzufrieren begann, wurden
wir unvermeidlich vor Beendigung der Flußreise vom Eise
eingeschlossen. Wir sehnten uns von diesem offenen, kahlen, jedem
Wind und Wetter preisgegebenen Tschimen, wo das Brennholz sehr
knapp ist, fort. Abdurahman, der Kurier, wurde in dem Kahne über
den Fluß gesetzt, sein Pferd schwamm nebenher; ich war herzlich
froh, als ich ihn mit der kostbaren Posttasche glücklich auf dem
anderen Ufer sah.
Der Bek von Schah-jar, der mit Reitergefolge hierher gekommen
war, um mir seine Aufwartung zu machen (Abb. 40), schenkte mir
einen Hund, ein junges Tier, das wie ein Fuchs aussah, den Namen
Dowlet erhielt und ein komischer vierbeiniger Clown war. Gleich vom
ersten Tage an hielt er wütende Wache an Bord und wurde der
auserkorene Liebling aller zweibeinigen Passagiere mit Ausnahme
des Hahnes.
So lichteten wir denn unsere Anker und glitten fort von denen, die
am Ufer standen und uns mit staunenden Blicken nachschauten. Die
Flottille bestand jetzt aus vier Fahrzeugen. Da wir jetzt gewöhnlich
zwei Wegweiser hatten, mußte der eine mit dem Kahne
vorausgehen und Kasim mit der schwer belasteten Proviantfähre
hinterdrein fahren. Die Tagereise wurde lang, aber der Wind half
schieben. Das offene Bett erstreckte sich in Krümmungen nach
Osten. Hier und da berührten wir Wälder auf beiden Seiten, sonst
war das ganze Land eine Kamischsteppe mit ausgedehnten
Hochwasseranschwemmungen.
Es war schön, an diesem Abend die steifgefrorenen Glieder am
Feuer wärmen zu können. Der Sicherheit halber wird jetzt stets ein
kleiner Holzvorrat an Bord genommen, falls es dort, wo man lagert,
kein Brennholz geben sollte.
Am 11. November passierten wir verschiedene Hirtenlager, und
am 12. begann der Uferwald wieder häufig und schön zu werden.
Alle geschützten Buchten und Arme waren jetzt morgens überfroren,
und manchmal sahen wir kleine Eisscheiben, die sich am Ufer
gebildet hatten, auf dem Wasser schwimmen.
Der Fluß heißt hier Ugen oder Ögen, aber auch Terem oder
Tarim. Die Kähne haben schon genau dieselbe Form und dasselbe
Aussehen wie im Loplande. Mehrere tausend Wildgänse schwebten
täglich über unseren Häuptern hinweg. Oft waren die Flügel der
Pfeilspitze mehrere hundert Meter lang, und manchmal schien der
Führer den anderen um etwa 30 Meter voranzufliegen.
Wahrscheinlich waren es die letzten Pilger, die sich durch die Kälte
der letzten Tage hatten zum Aufbruch bestimmen lassen. An den
Pappeln sitzt kaum noch ein einziges Blatt; sie haben ihr gelbes
Herbstgewand abgeworfen und warten auf den Winter.
Am nächsten Tage passierten wir den Punkt, wo der Intschikke-
darja von links gerade in einer scharfen Biegung nach Norden
einmündet. Es fängt an, im Zelte grimmig kalt zu werden, und ich
pflege in der Jolle Platz zu nehmen, um mich ein bißchen der Sonne
zu erfreuen. Die Temperatur des Wassers ist jetzt mittags nur 2 Grad
über Null, und die langen Stangen haben unten eine Eishülse. In
Biegungen, in denen die Südsonne nicht ankommen kann, ist die
Uferlinie von einem fußbreiten, höchstens 12 Millimeter dicken
Eisrande eingefaßt, der jetzt ein wenig über der Wasserfläche
schwebt, die gefallen war, seit er sich gebildet hatte.
Wir mußten im Dunkeln lange nach einem geeigneten
Lagerplatze suchen. Islam und Nasar gingen zu Fuß und waren bald
außer Sicht. Doch spät abends leuchtete in der Ferne ein Feuer. Sie
hatten an einer Uferstelle Halt gemacht, wo eine alte Sattma stand,
und nährten nun, ohne Rücksicht auf die Hütte und ihren Besitzer,
das Feuer mit dem dürren Holze.
Unsere Tage flossen ruhig, still und einförmig dahin. Das
Eintreten des Winters veränderte unsere Lebensweise nur wenig. Es
ging nur mehr Brennholz drauf, aber unser Lieferant brummte nicht;
es handelte sich bloß darum, im Dunkeln passende Stellen mit
trockenem Holze zu finden, denn mit solchen, wo nur junge Bäume
wuchsen, war uns wenig gedient. Ich wurde jetzt erst um 6½ Uhr
geweckt, und es war wenig angenehm, bei 11–12 Grad Kälte
aufzustehen und die eiskalten Kleider anzuziehen. Die Toilette wurde
daher mit einer virtuosenhaften Geschwindigkeit abgefertigt, zu der
die Gründlichkeit in umgekehrtem Verhältnis stand. War man
angekleidet und hatte man um 7 Uhr die ersten meteorologischen
Ablesungen gemacht, so war es um so schöner, nach dem Feuer
eilen zu können, das in der Morgenkälte lebhaft brannte, nachdem
es über Nacht den Boden um sich herum erwärmt hatte. Wenn ich
ans Ufer komme, begrüßt mich von allen Seiten ein freundliches,
höfliches „Salam aleikum“. Die Männer sitzen dann gewöhnlich beim
Frühstück, das aus gekochtem Schaffleisch mit Bouillon, worin
Brotstücke schwimmen, und Tee besteht. Auch ich verzehre nun
mein Frühstück am Feuer. Darauf werden die gewöhnlichen
Ufermessungen vorgenommen, und wenn alles fertig ist und die
Lebensgeister wieder angeregt sind, kommandiere ich „Mangele“
(Weiterfahren!), und in einem Augenblick sind die Taue gelöst, die
Stangen im Wasser, und die Fähre setzt ihren langen Weg den Tarim
hinab fort.
Der Fluß ist glücklicherweise so tief, daß wir nur selten auf Grund
stoßen, und in den meisten Fällen können wir uns mit den Stangen
wieder flottmachen. Das Achterdeck gewährt einen recht
malerischen Anblick. Männer, Schafe, Hühner, Säcke, Kisten
durcheinander, und eine Rauchsäule zieht von ihrem Feuer über den
Fluß hin, so daß die Fähre von fern wie ein Dampfer aussieht. Dort
wird Brot gebacken, meine gewaschene Wäsche an ausgespannten
Leinen getrocknet, schmutziges Geschirr abgewaschen und
Werkzeuge und Hausgerät angefertigt. Naser war damit beschäftigt,
mit dem Beile ein gewaltiges Steuerruder zurechtzuhauen, mittelst
dessen man mit der in Gegenströmung geratenen Fähre würde
ausbiegen können. Kasim und Kader haben sich in den Besitz
zweier Kähne gesetzt, mit denen sie die kleine Fähre manövrieren,
wenn die Stangen nicht bis auf den Grund reichen. Wenn der Tag
einförmig zu werden beginnt, wird von allen Seiten ein Lied
angestimmt, das in dem Schweigen der Wälder recht stimmungsvoll
erklingt. Gegen Abend erstirbt jedoch der Gesang. Alle sehnen sich
nach dem großen Lagerfeuer, aber wir fahren noch eine ziemliche
Weile nach Sonnenuntergang im Mondschein weiter. Keine Feuer
leuchten an diesen einsamen Ufern, nur die Reflexe des Mondes
folgen geschäftig den Ringeln auf der Wasserfläche, und das
Achterdeckfeuer wirft einen matten Schein auf das Schilf am
Uferrande.
Wenn ich endlich „Indi toktamiß“ (Anhalten) kommandiere, wird
es an Bord lebendig. Im Nu wird die Fähre festgemacht, einige
Feuerbrände und alles notwendige Küchengeschirr an Land
getragen, in einem gewaltigen Topfe der Asch (Reispudding) mit
Fleisch und Gemüse zubereitet und die Kiste mit meinem Service,
Tee, Gewürzen und Konserven neben das Feuer gestellt, wo jetzt
auch ich mein spätes Mittagessen zu verzehren pflege. Alle Zutaten
zum Pudding sind an Bord vorbereitet worden, und es dauert daher
auch nicht lange, bis Islam mit der Meldung „Asch taijar“ erscheint.
Nicht lange währt es, so legen sich die Männer um das Feuer herum
in ihren Pelzen schlafen; solange jenes groß und hoch ist, lassen sie
den Pelz vorn offen, doch sobald sie schläfrig werden, hüllen sie sich
ganz darin ein und kriechen näher an das verkohlende Feuer heran,
das nachts sich selbst überlassen bleibt. Sie schnarchen schon eine
gute Weile, ehe ich mit den Tagesaufzeichnungen fertig bin und
ihrem Beispiele folgen kann.
Zehntes Kapitel.
Der Jumalak-darja auf dem Wege
durch die Sandwüste.
A m 14. November wurde die Tagereise mit einer mittleren

Geschwindigkeit von 44 Metern zurückgelegt. Während der
Nacht hatte sich Eis zwischen den Fahrzeugen der Flottille gebildet,
die als festgefrorenes Ganzes am Ufer lag. Nur für die kleine Jolle
war dies gefährlich, denn die scharfen Eisscheiben konnten wie
Messer auf ihren straffgespannten Segeltuchrumpf wirken. Die
Uferanschwemmungen sind steinhart und geben einen harten,
scharrenden, fast klingenden Ton von sich, wenn sie mit den
beeisten Stangen in Berührung kommen. Während des Tages wurde
jedoch nur eine einzige Treibeisscholle beobachtet, die in dem
trüben Wasser kaum zu sehen war. Noch geht der Erdfrost nicht
tiefer als ein paar Zentimeter, wodurch gerade an der Uferlinie
eigentümliche Leisten, Scheiben und Wülste entstehen, nachdem
der darunterliegende lose Schlamm fortgespült worden ist. Doch
sobald die Sonne etwas wärmende Kraft erhalten hat, werden sie
wieder weich und fallen polternd ins Wasser. Wildgänse sind nicht
mehr zu sehen.
In einiger Entfernung von uns standen vier Männer wie
Bildsäulen und betrachteten uns. Als wir jedoch näherkamen,
nahmen sie Hals über Kopf Reißaus, ihre Habseligkeiten und vier
böse Hunde zurücklassend, die uns wohl eine Stunde unter
wütendem Bellen verfolgten. Später sahen wir ihre Pferde weiden;
auch diese folgten uns am Ufer.
Als es dunkel wurde, mußte Rehim Bai, der eine unserer
Cicerones, mit dem Kahne vorausgehen und das Fahrwasser
zeigen. Er hatte an einer schrägstehenden Stange eine gewaltige
chinesische Papierlaterne, in der eine helleuchtende Öllampe
brannte. Er mußte sich ein paar hundert Meter vor uns halten. Ich
machte die Kompaßpeilungen an der Laterne ebenso sicher wie bei
Tageslicht.
Gleich unterhalb des Lagers Te p p e - t e s c h d i passierten wir am
Tage darauf die Grenze zwischen den Verwaltungsbezirken Schah-
jar und Kutschar. Die Grenze war durch ein kegelförmiges Gebinde
von Stangen und Stöcken bezeichnet; östlich davon dürfen nur
Kutscharer Hirten ihre Schafe weiden.
In der Nähe von K ä l l ä l i k fanden wir inmitten mehrerer
Schafhürden eine außergewöhnlich gut gebaute Lehmhütte. Ein
Hund, eine Hühnerschar und einige Lämmer waren die einzigen
Geschöpfe, die wir erblickten; aber wir sahen bald, daß die
Bewohner die Flucht ergriffen hatten, sowie sich die Fähre an ihrem
Ufer gezeigt hatte. Auf dem Herde in der Hütte brannte Feuer unter
dem Topfe, und Kleidungsstücke und Werkzeuge lagen umher. Die
benachbarten Dickichte wurden durchsucht, aber niemand
gefunden. Schließlich zeigte sich von weitem ein Knabe, der nach
einer energischen Treibjagd eingefangen wurde. Der Ärmste war
aber so furchtsam, daß er nicht dazu vermocht werden konnte, den
Mund aufzutun, noch weniger, uns Aufklärungen zu geben. Er
zitterte an allen Gliedern und wagte nicht einmal aufzusehen.
Was für phantastische Sagen und Märchen in den Wäldern des
Tarim über unsere Fähre und ihre weite Reise wohl in Umlauf sein
mochten! Wie oft passierten wir leere, verlassene Hütten, deren
Einwohner sich eben erst aus dem Staube gemacht hatten! Was
sollten diese einfachen Hirten denken, wenn sie ein solches
Ungetüm herannahen sehen, ein ungeheueres Wassertier, das mit
nach vorn und hinten ausgestreckten Fühlhörnern lautlos wie ein
Tiger schleicht? Viele liefen kopflos davon, als sei ihnen der Böse
selbst auf den Fersen, andere blieben in gemessener Entfernung am
Waldrande stehen, um zu sehen, was hieraus werden würde, und
noch andere liefen außer sich herum, als habe ein Waldgeist sie
erschreckt. Doch wie dem auch sei, wenn man die Anlage der
Orientalen für Übertreibungen und Aberglauben kennt, kann man
davon überzeugt sein, daß in dem Kielwasser unserer Fähre eine
ganze Menge Legenden und Geschichten entstanden, die, von der
Tradition geschützt, mit der Zeit noch zu einer ungeheuerlichen
Erzählung von dem den Tarim hinab erfolgten Siegeszuge des
Flußgottes, des Wüstenkönigs oder des Waldgeistes verbessert
werden.
Im Lager C h a d e - d u n g wurden am 16. November die Führer aus
Tschimen entlassen, weil sie die Gegend und die Namen der Wälder
hier nicht mehr kannten. Als wir das Lager verließen, hatten wir also
keinen anderen Wegweiser als den gewundenen Lauf des Flusses,
und es galt, um jeden Preis einen Mann zu finden, der mitkommen
wollte. Endlich sahen wir einen Hirtenknaben mit seiner Herde und
kamen ihm ziemlich nahe, ehe er uns gewahr wurde; da lief er aber
auch schon davon, so schnell ihn seine Beine trugen. Wir mußten
ihn jedoch haben, und so wurde wieder eine zeitraubende Treibjagd
angestellt, die damit endete, daß er erwischt wurde. Er teilte uns mit,
daß die Gegend S a r i k b u j a heiße und wir weiter unten auf dem
linken Ufer noch vor Abend dort ansässige Menschen finden
würden. Die Auskunft war richtig, und wir erhielten bald einen
kundigen Lotsen.
Jetzt tauen die Eisscheiben, die sich auf den ruhigen
Uferlagunen ausbreiten, nicht mehr in der Sonne auf; sie nehmen
ungestört an Dicke zu und tragen die Hunde, denen es auf ihren
Schwimmtouren oft ordentliche Mühe macht, ein von dünnem Eis
eingefaßtes Ufer zu erklimmen. Diese Eisränder werden jetzt
sichtlich größer und scheinen stillschweigend übereingekommen zu
sein, daß sie eine Brücke über den ganzen Fluß spannen und uns
unerbittlich den Weg versperren wollen.
Es wurde jetzt Regel, daß die Fahrt jeden Tag mindestens zwölf
Stunden dauerte, und die Papierlaterne half dem Monde abends
beim Leuchten. Heute abend loderte in der Ferne ein einsames
Feuer am Ufer; es war in D u n g - k o t a n , welchen Punkt ich 1896
berührt hatte und der aus diesem Grunde für die Karte von
Bedeutung war. Der hier wohnende Bai Kader erteilte mir manche
wichtige Auskunft über die mit der Jahreszeit wechselnden
Eigenschaften des Flusses.
Kader erzählte uns auch, daß der Tiger in der Gegend ziemlich
häufig vorkomme. Ich kaufte von ihm das schöne Fell einer großen
Bestie, die hier vor vierzehn Tagen erlegt worden war. Man erstaunt
darüber, daß diese einfachen Waldmenschen mit ihren primitiven
Vorderladern es fertig bringen, einem Tiere wie dem Tiger den
Garaus zu machen. Ohne List würde es jedoch nicht gehen; denn
der Tiger ist zu stark für sie. Er raubt ein Pferd, eine Kuh oder ein
Schaf und schleppt seine Beute ins Schilf hinein. Hier frißt er sich
satt und läßt den Rest bis auf weiteres liegen, und wenn er seiner
Wege geht, benutzt er stets einen ausgetretenen Hirtenpfad. Infolge
dieser Eigentümlichkeit wird er Joll-bars (joll = Weg, Steig, bars =
Tiger) genannt. Aus der Fährte sieht man, wohin er gegangen ist
und von woher man ihn erwarten kann, und an den Resten der
Beute erkennt man, ob er zurückzukommen beabsichtigt, wenn er
wieder hungrig wird. Dann wird auf dem Wege das Fangeisen oder
die Falle (Kappgan oder Tosak) aufgestellt, unter ihr eine 50
Zentimeter tiefe Grube gegraben und das Ganze sorgfältig mit
Zweigen, Reisig und Blättern bedeckt. Der Tiger tritt, wenn er Pech
hat, in das Eisen und sitzt dann fest. Die Falle ist von Stahl und so
schwer, daß der Gefangene sie nur mühsam mitschleppen kann,
wenn er sich zurückzieht. Sie loszuwerden ist unmöglich, denn sie
packt sehr fest und ist mit scharfen Widerhaken versehen. Die Spur
ist sehr deutlich und leicht zu verfolgen, doch die Jäger lassen ihn
mindestens eine Woche damit gehen, bevor sie sich ihm zu nahen
wagen. Der Tiger, der jetzt der Fähigkeit, sich frei zu bewegen,
beraubt ist, kann sich nicht länger Nahrung verschaffen und ist
ausgehungert und elend. Er muß die unschuldige Kuh, die er ins
Dschungel geschleppt hat, verwünschen und fühlt, wie ihm die Tatze
abstirbt. Endlich wagen sich die Männer zu Pferd mit geladenen
Flinten an ihn heran und schießen nun gewöhnlich vom Sattel aus,
um weniger angreifbar zu sein, wenn der Tiger es mit dem Reste
seiner Kraft versuchen sollte, sich auf sie zu stürzen. Der Tiger,
dessen Fell ich jetzt kaufte, war ganz erschöpft gewesen, als sich
die Jäger bis auf 40 Meter Schußweite an ihn herangewagt hatten,
und nach der ersten Kugel, die ihm ins linke Auge ging, hatte er sich
auf die Seite gelegt. Doch solchen Respekt hatten sie vor ihm, daß
sie ihm vom Sattel herab noch fünf Kugeln gaben, ehe sie sich ihm
zu nähern wagten. Man kann sich ihre Befriedigung denken, als sie
den ärgsten Feind ihrer Herden getötet hatten.
Der Tosak ist ein sinnreiches Instrument, ein Tellereisen oder
richtiger eine Kneifzange, deren beide Bogen mittelst zweier
stählerner Federn von großer Spannkraft zum Zusammenklappen
gebracht werden. Die Schneiden der beiden Bogen tragen scharfe
ineinandergreifende Zähne. Die Federn spannen mit so großer,
elastischer Kraft, daß man sich aufs äußerste anstrengen muß, um
beide Bogen in die Lage zu bringen, die sie beim Aufstellen der Falle
haben müssen. Die Bogen liegen nun an dem Stahlringe und
werden einfach durch einen Bindfaden und einige Holzpflöckchen in
dieser Lage festgehalten. Der Bindfaden bildet den Durchmesser
des Rings; auf ihn muß der Tiger treten, wenn die Zange
augenblicklich zusammenklappen und seine Tatze festklemmen soll.
Einmal war ein Tiger nur mit den Zehen darin sitzengeblieben, hatte
diese abgerissen und war, wenn auch als Krüppel, doch noch
entkommen.
Nach dem Lop zu tritt der Tiger häufiger auf, besonders auf dem
Südufer; bei Tage zeigt er sich selten, doch nachts streift er
geisterhaft auf den Hirtensteigen umher.
Der Tigertöter begleitete uns am 17. nach Ostnordosten. Der
Fluß ist schmal und gewunden, und seine nächsten Umgebungen
bilden ein Gewirr von Altwassern, Armen, die sich nur während der
Hochwasserperiode füllen, und von Uferseen, umgeben von Schilf
und Wald. Im großen und ganzen ist meine Karte über den Fluß eine
Augenblicksphotographie, denn kein Jahr vergeht, ohne daß neue
Arme entstehen, alte Krümmungen verlassen werden und
Uferlagunen sich bilden oder austrocknen. Es ist ein unruhiger Fluß;
das Land ist flach, und das Bett verändert launenhaft seine Lage.
41. Frühstücksrast auf dem Jumalak-darja. (S. 105.)
42. Rekognoszierender Kahn. (S. 108.)
43. Ördek und Palta als Lotsen. (S. 108.)
Nach Sonnenuntergang stieg der Mond rotgelb an einem blauen

Himmel auf, der jedoch immer dunklere Schattierungen annahm,
während der Mond immer weißer und heller wurde. Gegen diesen
Hintergrund stachen die Umrisse der Ufer so scharf ab, als seien sie
aus schwarzem Papier ausgeschnitten; alles sah in dem winterlich
farblosen Tone, der in der Natur herrschte, kalt und frostig aus. Der
Tarim lag blank und glänzend da, und nur um steckengebliebene
Treibholzstücke herum war die Strömung zu erkennen. Wenn der
Mond tief stand, schien seine Scheibe vom einen Ufer zum anderen
zu rollen, je nachdem der Fluß einen Bogen nach rechts oder nach
links machte.
Am 18. November trafen wir bei L ä m p a - a k i n die ersten
Lopleute. Es war ein Greis mit seinen beiden Söhnen, die in drei
Kähnen mit Netzen und anderen Geräten auf dem Wege
flußaufwärts waren, um zu fischen. Sie waren ganz verdutzt, als wir
sie mitten in einer Biegung überraschten, gewannen es aber nicht
über sich, davonzurudern, obgleich dies mit ihren schnellen, leichten
Nußschalen eine Kleinigkeit gewesen wäre. Die Jünglinge durften
weiterfahren, den Alten aber nahmen wir nach vielem Wenn und
Aber mit. Er kannte die Gegend bis in die kleinsten Einzelheiten.
Bei K o r a l - d u n g (Wachthügel) wurde auf dem rechten Ufer
längere Rast gemacht. Hier ist die Grenze zwischen Kutschar und
Lop. Unmittelbar im Süden des Hügels glänzt im Sonnenscheine der
K o r a l - d u n g n i n g - k ö l l mit grünblauem, kristallhellem Wasser, zur
Hälfte mit Eis bedeckt und von Tamariskenhecken und
außerordentlich dichten Kamischfeldern umgeben, in denen
zahlreiche Tigerspuren von den nächtlichen Wanderungen des
schwarzgestreiften Raubtieres Zeugnis ablegen (Abb. 38). Im
Sommer werden diese Felder überschwemmt, und der Boden war
noch feucht; aber jetzt stehen nur noch die seichten Uferseen voll
Wasser. Der Fluß, der von hier an J u m a l a k - d a r j a (der runde Fluß)
genannt wird, zieht sich nach Nordosten, macht aber bald wieder
einen Bogen nach Südosten und gleicht einem schmalen Bande
zwischen den Schilffeldern (Abb. 39, 41).
Hinter A t s c h a l veränderte er wieder sein Aussehen und
schrumpfte auf nur 20 Meter Breite zusammen, war 7 Meter tief und
hatte keine Spur von Anschwemmungen. Die Uferterrassen sind
steinhart gefroren, und stößt die Fähre dagegen, so ist es, als
schramme sie an einem Marmorkai entlang. Hier haben wir rechts
den Ufersee A k - k u m n i n g - j u g a n - k ö l l (der große See im weißen
Sande), der zwischen unfruchtbaren Dünen eingebettet liegt und so
groß ist, daß die Stimme vom einen Ufer nicht bis zum anderen
dringt. Auch am 19. passierten wir eine Reihe Uferseen, und es ist
ein charakteristisches Zeichen des Tarim, daß diese immer
zahlreicher werden, je mehr er sich dem Lop-nor nähert.
Der Sonnenuntergang rief merkwürdige Beleuchtungen hervor.
Die ganze Steppe leuchtete in so intensivem, feurigem Gelb, als
wäre das Schilf ringsumher in Brand geraten. Dunkel und
schweigend schlängelte sich der Jumalak-darja mit pechschwarzem
Wasser durch die Schilfdickichte, in denen der Königstiger hinterlistig
versteckt liegt. Es pfeift und knistert in den Eisscheiben, die alle
Lagunen bedecken. Manchmal leuchtet es in dem dunkeln Wasser
vor uns wie ein Blitz auf, wenn eine vorher unsichtbare
Treibeisscholle sich in einem Wasserwirbel querstellt und sich eine
glashelle Ecke, in der die Strahlen der untergehenden Sonne sich
widerspiegeln und wie in einem Prisma spielen, über die Oberfläche
des Wassers erhebt. Kahl und schwarz stehen die Pappelstämme da
und strecken ihre knorrigen, dürren Arme über den Fluß hin, noch im
Tode seine lebenspendende Flut segnend.
Wieder wurde der Fluß so krumm, daß ich täglich oft ein paar
hundert Kompaßpeilungen machen mußte, um alle Bogen auf der
Karte eintragen zu können. Wir hatten noch einen Lopmann als
Cicerone angestellt, der uns in einer mit Eis bedeckten Lagune im
Vorbeifahren einige Fische fing. In derartigen klaren, stillen
Wasseransammlungen pflegen die Fische sich gern aufzuhalten.
Das Netz wird quer vor der Mündung der Bucht ausgespannt, und es
war lustig anzusehen, wie geschickt der Fischer seinen Kahn führte.
Im Achter stehend trieb er den Kahn mit dem breitblätterigen Ruder
in sausender Fahrt über das Netz hinweg auf das in der Mündung
spröde Eis, das unter dem Gewichte des Kahnes brach und dann mit
dem Ruder bis ans Binnenende der Bucht zerschlagen wurde. Die
Schollen wurden in die Strömung hinausgeschoben und die Fische
mit dem Ruder nach dem Netze hingejagt, das dann in den Kahn
gezogen wurde. Ist das Eis zu stark, so werden die Fische nur durch
Ruderschläge gegen seine Decke aufgescheucht. In den großen
Uferseen wird der Fischfang auch im Winter und selbst wenn sie
ganz vom Flusse abgeschnürt sind, betrieben.
Am 20. November führte die Richtung des Jumalak-darja auf der
letzten Strecke der Tagereise ganz gerade nach Ostnordost. In
weiter Ferne entdeckten wir mit dem Fernrohre etwa zehn Männer
am Strande, bei denen wir Halt machten. Es waren die Beks der in
der Nähe des Flusses liegenden Ortschaften Tograk-mähälläh und
Kara-tschumak. Sie teilten uns mit, daß sie von Fu Tai, dem
Generalgouverneur von Urumtschi, Befehl erhalten hätten, einem
„Tschong mähman“ oder vornehmen Gaste, der den Jarkent-darja
herunterfahre, entgegenzukommen. Die Chinesen behielten uns
also, wenn auch sehr von weitem, im Auge, und das Gerücht von
der Reise auf dem Wasser hatte sich weit verbreitet. Doch niemand
wußte, woher wir kamen und wo unsere Reise enden sollte; alle
fanden nur, daß wir sehr sonderbare Geschöpfe seien. Mehr als
zwei Jahre später fragten mich indische Kaufleute in Ladak, ob ich
nichts von einem weißen Manne wüßte, der mehrere Monate lang
einen großen Fluß im Norden hinabgesegelt sei; auf dem Indus,
erklärten sie, würde eine solche Fahrt unmöglich sein.
Junus Bek, der vornehmste unserer neuen Freunde, erwartete
uns seit mehreren Tagen und war schon flußaufwärts geritten, aber
wieder umgekehrt, da er von einer Fähre nichts hatte erblicken
können.
Ketschik, der Punkt, an dem wir jetzt lagerten, ist von großem
Interesse. Der Name bedeutet „Furt“, weil hier die Straße zwischen
Kakte und Karaul den Fluß kreuzt, wie gewöhnlich an einer geraden
Stelle, wo der Grund keine tiefen Gruben hat. Hier gähnt links ein
mächtiges, mit Schlamm gefülltes Bett. Ich erfuhr, daß dieses Bett
der frühere Lauf des Tarim gewesen und der Fluß darin mindestens
50 Jahre geströmt habe, da die Greise es schon in ihrer Kindheit
gekannt hätten. Vor vier Jahren habe der Fluß seinen Lauf verändert
und dieses alte Bett so vollständig verlassen, daß nicht einmal
während der Hochwasserperiode ein Tropfen dort hineinlaufe. Der
neue Lauf, dessen Wiedervereinigung mit dem alten Bette wir erst
nach mehreren Tagen erreichen sollten, zieht sich nach Südosten

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The Politics of Spatial Transgressions

in the Arts Gregory Blair (Editor)

Gregory of Nyssa: On the Human Image of God 1st Edition

John F. Kennedy's 1957 Algeria Speech: The Politics of

Communicating Creativity: The Discursive Facilitation

Sociology of the Arts in Action Arturo Rodríguez Morató

Mathematics in the Visual Arts Ruth Scheps

Arts Integration: Teaching Subject Matter through the

Storytelling in Participatory Arts with Young People:

Gregory Palamas And The Making Of Palamism In The

The Politics of Spatial

ISBN 978-3-030-55388-3 ISBN 978-3-030-55389-0 (eBook)

1 The Politics of Spatial Transgressions in the Arts 1

2 From Place-Making to Placelessness: How Arts

3 Tong Yan Gaai: Redefining Racialized Spaces 33

4 Mapping Evictions: Urban Displacement

5 The City as a Composition: Working Through

6 Out of Place: Displacements of the Body in Artistic

7 Losing Site: Folded Morphologies of Photography

8 Souped Up: Slow Building of Support Networks

9 Mapping as Aesthetic Practice: Toward a Theory

10 Learning from Las Vegas Redux: Steve Wynn

Dorothy Barenscott is an art historian whose research relates to the

philosophies of place. Greg has exhibited his artwork and presented

Fig. 3.1 Golden Happiness Plaza, Calgary. Archival pigment print

Fig. 7.3 Utopos (Computer Engineer Working in Lab B10), folded

Fig. 10.8 Jeff Koons, Popeye (2009–2011) was purchased by Wynn

The Politics of Spatial Transgressions

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

he (re)frames transgression as a search, as an adaptable and construc-

asked in his ruminations on transgression in A Preface to Transgression.

displacements and disruptions. This specific focus is not intended as a

being is revealed in time. For Heidegger, aletheia describes how being

nature of that century.” As Hagen writes, it is this comment that serves

distribution of power is a cultural construct often aimed at benefiting or

platform. Souped Up explores communal meals and the creation of long-

discussion and scholarship of spatial/social art practices because it offers

From Place-Making to Placelessness: How

Lamenting the loss of a neighbourhood’s character or grit seems a partic-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

This chapter is meant to read as a thought experiment on the language

Case Study: 401 Richmond1

who were suddenly absorbing unexpected rent increases of over $13,000

city center,” establishing a commitment to “expand Toronto’s finance,

My relationship with 401 started before I even lived in Toronto. I

Adding to the chorus of voices on the significance of 401, community

Jennifer Bhogal, former Executive Director of the print focused artist-

coalmine canaries. An unstable arts ecology can signal wider political

As both outcome and process, seeking spatial justice can be studied at

Although not speaking directly to this topic, Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Spatial justice is a useful conceptual tool from which to consider the

• Density: Being able to leverage location in order to serve broad

chip collections and exhibitions, operating budgets in the millions (as

urban landscape. Arguably, city centres that exclusively accommodate one

Tong Yan Gaai: Redefining Racialized Spaces

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

38. Der See Koral-dungning-köll. (S. 105.)

40. Besuch des Beks von Schah-jar in Tschimen. (S. 97.)

Während der zwei Rasttage, die wir am Ufer von Ts c h i m e n