Kay Burns is the 2023 Historian in Residence

During my time as Historian in Residence I have been looking at the maps in the Calgary Public Library collection and researching the history of maps and their deceptions.

Maps are generally created as charts and documents to portray geographic location and navigational potential, usually with an intent of accuracy for scale relationships. Maps contain an inherent authority. My research showed that we perhaps should not view maps as an authoritative record given the quantity of misrepresentations resulting from cartographers’ and publishers’ selective choices of what is represented and how, the imposition of arbitrary grid systems as defining boundaries, as well as the distortion that occurs through portraying 3-dimensional landforms as 2-dimensional surfaces.

As an adjunct to that research and exploration, I also presented a workshop as part of my residency to consider mapmaking as a portrayal of experience and sensory understanding of place. Within the maps that participants made in the workshop, scale and direction does not matter; rather the map becomes a visual record for story about site and memory. The act of focused experience and observation of a site, of establishing memory associated with site, is an act of placemaking.

Lucy Lippard (author who addresses culture, history, geography, and contemporary art in her work) states: “Space defines landscape, where space combined with memory defines place.”[1]

It is through presence and engagement that we create a sense of place. Many of us understand that sensibility for the land/location we call home. Lippard also says: “Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person's life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there.”[2]

This workshop was about exploring placemaking and about forming a relationship to place. A significant part of that exploration involved questioning. How do we create a map of the meaning of place that goes beyond documenting roads and buildings or defining routes? How does our attentiveness to site lead to placemaking? How do we build a relationship with, acknowledge, and embrace a place that may not be “ours”? Landscape becomes memorable through meanings that result from personalized encounters.

Following a brief introduction in the Giuffre Library’s Program Room about ideas of mapmaking and placemaking we went on a walk in the park area next to the library. Walking is a physical action that requires balance and intent, but it’s also such a common movement that it requires little thought for how we are doing it. The act of walking provides purposeful engagement with our surroundings and with the natural elements present; an awareness of stepping, of the ground below our feet, and of moving in an unhurried way through a space.  This walk was undertaken as a slow, single-file experience with distance between each participant. Participants focused on the sensory experience of the air temperature, the various ground surfaces being walked on, the sounds made by our own presence as well as sounds within the environment, visual cues, and distractions, etc.

We returned to the program room for further consideration of the experiences encountered on the walk and then everyone created a drawing of their memory map as a document of their experience. There was no right or wrong, no concerns about correctness or realism in their depictions. They considered things such as what stood out the most? What do different sounds look like as a drawing? What was distracting along the way? How can the scale of experience be addressed instead of attempting to portray an accurate scale representation of route and distance? The maps were then folded and inserted into covers to become a tangible hand-held object as a record of each participant’s experience. The act of showing these maps to others immediately leads to the telling of a story to accompany it, to explain events, features, and details of their own interpretation, of their own placemaking.

The act of experiential placemaking encourages awareness towards understanding other cultures and other values in relation to site. Placemaking also carries loaded implications for investigating how and what histories are bestowed upon site. Our understanding of place, our relationship to place, is explored and understood through questions that lead to more questions. Through steps and missteps. Through shared presence and shared story.

[1] Lippard, Lucy, The Lure of the Local, The New Press, US, 1998, p9

[2] Ibid, p7

Kay Burns is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher driven by perpetual curiosity. She is passionate about questioning the acquisition of knowledge and what unexpected connections are revealed through that process. Her work considers the authority of information, specifically in relation to archival and museum practices. As the Historian in Residence, she will explore Calgary Public Library’s map collection and records of surveyors, asking questions about the perception of place, about Calgary’s growth as a city, and the annexation of surrounding land.

The Historian in Residence is presented in partnership with Calgary Public Library.

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