An Audiovisual installation by Katie Toth and Mary-Dan Johnston
It goes like this: the bank closes, along with the grocery, then the laundromat, the club, the pub, the corner store where we bought popsicles and cartons of milk. The schools crumbled and were consolidated. Now, standing on the same spot where I bought my first vodka cran, underage, there is thick gravel where years ago I felt linoleum, softer, sticking to the sole of my shoe.
The geography remains the same, but the landscape changes
I was there is an attempt to illuminate the psychogeography of a city that is often accused of being stuck in the past. This mixed-media installation combines photography, oral history testimony and cartography to shed a light on what is lost in the process of gentrification.
Location and Hours
This piece is presented in the lobby of The Bus Stop Theatre Co-op and can be experienced ahead or after any event presented at this location. I can also be experience between 10am and 4pm daily from May 8th to 10th.
Biographies
Katie Toth is an emerging audio artist and digital/audio journalist who has been published in VICE, the Village Voice, and NPR. Her first art piece, which celebrated New York City’s public transit system, was produced in collaboration with photographer Lara Atallah, and displayed at The New York City Transit Museum’s community artist event Platform.
Mary-Dan Johnston is a writer, researcher, educator working at the intersections of the public and the private. Trained as an oral historian and qualitative researcher, she is particularly interested in how the political economy of the Maritimes has shaped the embodied experiences of working people. Her writing has recently appeared in GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine. Her art practice uses street photography to capture moments of tension and collaboration between individuals and the built environment.
Presented in partnership with the Bus Stop Theatre Cooperative and the StART Festival.
