The Project

When I first learned about the amazing capabilities of Projection Mapping, I knew automatically that I wanted to find a way to engage with this technology and Queer History. Projection Mapping is a vehicle of storytelling and augumented reality, allowing creative, temporary engagements with existing architecture/spaces that can expand and impact our perspectives of their realities. What could be the potential power of creating creative engagements with Queer and Trans History that could be displayed upon the public spaces of Ottawa, and demonstrate how 2SLGBTQ+ people are resilient, and how this history continues to inspire into the present?

Projecting the LGBT Purge Project:

These oral history videos, as Gary Kinsman and Patricia Gentizile state, "constitute a form of resistance that makes visible the social knowledge that national security texts actively suppressed." (Kinsman and Gentizile, 13) Ottawa's cityscape is not neutral; the city and its architecture are the home of the Canadian government and these buildings need to be recognized as important pieces of this institution and its operations. Each survivor's story speaks to the personal experiences of the LGBT Purge, and by projecting this history and these experiences of discrimination, it literally reflects this history right back onto this building, and Canadian institutions more largely, that inflicted this violence. While the oral histories engage listeners in the emotional and impactful experience of the LGBT Purge, projecting these videos onto the Department of National Defence Headquarters Building reminds us that this history is not one of the past, but is very present; although the government issued a formal apology and has paid reparations for the LGBT Purge, this does not negate the impact this has left on thousands of people, as well as the continuing discrimination still perpetuated against 2SLGBTQ+ peoples across Canada.

This project is also a response to a question, posed by Dr. Graham in his past course 'Guerrilla Digital Public History,': "What are the stories in Ottawa that require a guerrilla digital public history?" (Graham). In their article, "Cooking Commoning Subjectivities: Guerrilla Narrative in the Cooperation Birmingham Solidarity Kitchen," Sergio Ruiz Cayuela and Marco Armiero envision guerrilla narratives as "the ensemble of practices that resist toxic narratives while proposing alternative (his)stories and identities. In this sense, guerrilla narrative is not simply the unheard story of oppression reclaimed from the memory dump; rather, guerrilla narrative is the practice of reimagining subaltern stories, storying them, and making collective identities" (Cayuela and Armiero, 84). The power behind Projecting the LGBT Purge is its' guerrilla narrative methodology, bringing these stories to directly engage with the toxic narratives produced by the Canadian government and the RCMP (literally reflecting on the buildings that house them). If actually executed on a larger scale, this project would also provide a public space of commoning for 2SLGBTQ+ people to access these stories, showcasing this history on a large scale, visible from many spaces in downtown Ottawa. Projection mapping, and digital storytelling tools more broadly, carry amazing opportunities for sharing 2SLGBTQ+ history with larger communities. These technologies can uplift and highlight 2SLGBTQ+ histories, voices and experiences while also having the power to foster engagements that create spaces of resistance through this history; spaces that cultivate community and collaboration while also challenging the violence and exclusion perpetuated by Canada more broadly (both in its past and present).

This website serves as a space to house both a recording of the Projecting the Purge project, as well as to outline the layers of my creation process. The Projecting the LGBT Purge page holds the recording of the final project, as well as description of my technological process of learning how to projection map. On the Videos page, I explain the exercise behind the recording that I projected, and provide the video without the projection for viewing. Finally, the Paradata page serves as a conclusion to the project, bringing together all of these elements into a short video. All sources that I used in the creation of this project, as well as this website, are on the Sources page. Hope you have as much fun exploring as I did in creating this project!