Before a landscape is transformed, it is made legible; it is mapped, surveyed, narrated, filmed, and bordered, producing images and records that shape how a territory is understood and used. Through these representations, territories are organized in ways that determine what can be built, extracted, preserved, displaced, or erased.

In dialogue with Reframing the American Landscape, which revisits mid-century US films that recasted landscapes in the image of development, this two-part program examines the relationship between representation and the exercise of power over territory. It asks whether the same instruments used to survey, classify, and administer territory can also be used to question dominant narratives, expose their consequences, and imagine other ways of seeing and understanding the ground.

To Take Measure

Join us for a hands-on workshop with Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists. They will introduce participants to open-source investigation: the use of satellite imagery, maps, photographs, videos, and metadata to examine how territories are transformed, represented, and contested through publicly available material. The workshop considers how forms of vision often associated with surveillance, military power, and state administration can be redirected to document environmental and spatial transformations, expose their consequences, and challenge official narratives.

The workshop costs CAD 20 per person. As space is limited, registration is required.