CONTEXT
How do you “walk”? At a pace? With wheels? With purpose? Are you a runner? Take a walk with the Toronto Landscape Observatory, as they invite you to re-examine your perspectives and your relationship with the land. All you need is a paper frame and a tennis ball!
How do we listen and learn with the land? Toronto Landscape Observatory encourages the careful observation of complicated landscapes that are always in flux and subject to change. Do you see or hear water? How do people move around you? Can you feel the wind on your raised hand? Who are your companions? Trees? Shrubs? Flowers? Animals? People? And how do you think they came to be there? All these questions and more guide you in honing your skills in observation and sharing as a means for public discussion about your future.
We invite you to go out, walk and observe anywhere you’re able to “take a walk!”
“A walk is a chance to get to know a familiar place in a new way: through observation, measurement, and documentation of relationships with the other human and more-than-human beings who belong there. Our bodies make useful instruments for observing and measuring what’s around us.”
The Toronto Landscape Observatory was installed as part of the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art at 72 Perth Avenue, with Programs available from May 1 – June 5, 2022.
The Toronto Landscape Observatory is an installation and a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help participants recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. Its materials and activities engage plural senses and speak to different worldviews, expertise, and ways of knowing the landscape. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain.
Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.
View the full roster of Toronto Landscape Observatory contributors.
Suggested Age/Grade
K-12, Families, Intergenerational
Curriculum Links
The Arts, English, Geography, Social Studies, History and Geography, Science and Technology, Health and Physical Education, Interdisciplinary Studies
Keywords
Observation, measurement, documentation, relationships, tools, perception, proprioception, movement, direction, question, course, route, future, life
FURTHER READING
- Wolff, Jane. Bay Lexicon. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press: 2021.
- Waterman, Tim, Jane Wolff, and Ed Wall. Landscape Citizenships. London: Routledge: 2021.
Downloadable Content:
- Element 1: How to Take A Walk (Web Version | Printer-friendly Version)
- Element 2: Frame (Web Version | Printable page)
- Editorial Sheet (Web Version | Printer-friendly Version)
About the Contributors
Jane Wolff (born in Boston, MA, USA; lives in Toronto, ON, Canada) studies, draws, and writes about the complicated landscapes that emerge from interactions between natural processes and cultural interventions; her goal is to make these difficult (and often contested) places legible to the wide range of audiences with a stake in the future. She is an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.
Susan Schwartzenberg (born in Chicago, IL, USA; lives in San Francisco, CA, USA) is a visual artist, photographer, and curator whose work engages the public dialogue through themes of memory, history, and the psychology of place. She works in the public realm investigating the ways stories of people and place find form within the surrounding landscape and environmental conditions. She is the director of the Fisher Bay Observatory, Exploratorium, San Francisco and a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, US.
Image Credit: Image by Aaron Hernandez.