2020-23
In Which We Draw A People’s Map of the Don River / Wonscotonach (a.k.a. Don River Radio)
In 2020-2023, together with Toronto-based collabo
rators, New York-based art collective Mare Liberum engaged with the communities around the Don/Wonscotonach – and the river’s environmental, artistic, and social history/ies – and the Don Mouth Renaturalization project – through a series of programs envisioning speculative maps for the future of the watershed.
As the Don River is changing, its boundaries are being redrawn before our eyes, the project asks us to consider “What do we want to remember of this time? What will the River remember of us?” For and by whom does the current Don River exist? And the future Don? Who owns land that is created through a process of landfill and “reclamation” of Lake Ontario? Who is consulted in its construction and future use? How might histories of extraction, colonialist exploitation of the land, and the toxic legacies of industry invite a future which is more just, oriented around care and collaboration, and in balance?Mare Liberum’s In Which We Draw A People’s Map of the Don River…, is an artistic research project and provocations, engagements, gatherings, and public actions along the site of Toronto’s Don River that brought together local residents, policymakers, and humam and more-than-human community members to collaborate on reimagining the Don.
The project was oriented in relation to the ongoing Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection Project (DMNP) which will reconnect the Don River and Lake Ontario, breaking down environmental, social, and institutional barriers that have artificially divided that which is indivisible: the river, the city, its inhabitants.
Hosted by Waterfront Toronto and Evergreen, as part of ArtworxTO, Toronto’s Year of Public Art in 2021, the project aims to reestablish the pathways that unite interdependent sites and people along urban watercourses.
The project culminated in a parade, a boatbuilding workshop, a residency, and a public navigation of the Port Lands by small craft, along with the creation of a 10-episode podcast in which we interviewed stakeholders and local residents on their memories and hopes for the Don.
PROJECT CONTRIBUTORS | EVENTS | PODCAST: DON RIVER RADIO
Project Publications
Punts for Toronto (333 kb)
A Map for Listening to Don River Radio (4.7 mb)
The Artist as Policy Shaper Grey Paper (13.1 mb)
DRR Risograph Print (11.9 mb)
166 7th Street // Gowanus Studio Space
Brooklyn, New York 11215