ABSTRACT: Walking Dundas Street: Critical Practices of Space and Public Memory Through Scenographic Chorography.
“Walking Dundas Street: Critical Practices of Space and Public Memory through Scenographic Chorography” sets out how my experiences as the author of the Let’s Rename Dundas Street online petition and an active participant in the campaign to rename Dundas Street in Toronto, have led me to develop a movement-based research-creation methodology that I call “scenographic chorography.”
Using Dundas Street and its environs as a laboratory, I explore how walking and photographing one of Toronto’s most historic, longest, and contentiously named thoroughfares raised questions about the physical roadway, its name, and how it has been historically and contemporaneously practiced as a spatial technology of colonial world building. Through written exegesis and artistic production, I describe and demonstrate how scenographic chorography was developed through sustained engagement with Toronto’s mnemonic environment, including the creation of walking tours of Toronto Metropolitan University’s campus, Toronto’s PATH system, Dundas Street itself, and via a series of sceno-chorographic artist books. Taken together, I propose this text, its attendant methodology, and artistic outputs, as a means of thinking through the role of movement in affirming and contesting dominant spatial narratives, represented by colonial monuments and toponyms, toward recovering or reimagining novel approaches to commemoration. Through creative approaches to research and education this interdisciplinary study engages with a wide-range of fields including geography, history and heritage, architecture, urban planning, and creative approaches to research and education, within these disciplines and frameworks. In doing so, this dissertation makes a unique contribution to the fields of memory, landscape, and performance studies.
WALKING DUNDAS STREET: CRITICAL PRACTICES OF SPACE & PUBLIC MEMORY THROUGH SCENOGRAPHIC CHOROGRAPHY
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THE DISSERTATION
