Middleground: Siting Dispossession

Name: Middleground: Siting Dispossession
Start: 2021-02-10T11:00:00
End: 2022-03-13T23:55:00
Location: Canadian Centre for Architecture

Exhibition, Hall Cases, 10 February 2021 to 13 March 2022

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Reservations

Stephen Shore, Main Street, Blackfoot, Métis, and Ogala Sioux Territory (Treaty 4 Territory, Gull Lake, Saskatchewan), 1974 (printed 2002). Chromogenic colour print, 43.2 x 55.2 cm. © Stephen Shore. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

Middleground: Siting Dispossession. Installation view, 2021

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Architects today must grapple with the emotionally charged and politically contested spaces—middlegrounds—that have come into being through settler colonial displacement: zoning processes based on non-Indigenous legal systems have established property, and settlement and design interventions have made land ”common.” Middleground takes the position that settler spatial practitioners must now work to return land that has been colonized through design.

The term “middleground” names the spaces in and practices through which architecture continues to be complicit in the dispossession of Indigenous lands. As an intentional curatorial form of settler accountability, we acknowledge pre-existing Indigenous rights to the sovereignty and use of land in what is now known as North America. This critical reading of exemplary projects from the CCA Collection reveals everyday spatial and power dynamics that have created middlegrounds but that have not often been acknowledged. Beyond restitution, how can architects participate in imagining more just futures for sites of dispossession?

Middleground is the result of a series of conversations between Ella den Elzen (Curatorial Coordinator), Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director, Research), and Camille Saade-Traboulsi (Administrative Coordinator, Publications and Research). Thanks to Indigenous advising editor Kaitlin Littlechild. All territorial and treaty names used in this project were accessed through native-land.ca.

Graphic design: Louise Paradis, Montréal

The CCA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Audio introduction

CCA · Middleground : Siting Dispossession

Selected objects

Arthur Erickson, a proposed service station for Shell Canada Ltd., 1966. At Simon Fraser University, unceded Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Kwikwetlem Nations, (Burnaby, British Columbia). Graphite and ink on transcluent paper, 61 × 91.4 cm. ARCH254965, Arthur Erickson fonds, CCA Collection © Estate of Arthur Erickson

Left: Stephen Shore, Main Street, Blackfoot, Métis, and Ogala Sioux Territory (Treaty 4 Territory, Gull Lake, Saskatchewan), 1974 (printed 2002). Chromogenic colour print, 43.2 × 55.2 cm. Courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York City © Stephen Shore. Right: Melvin Charney, alley and hydro poles in Blackfoot Confederacy Traditional Territory, (Treaty 7 Territory, Lethbridge, Alberta), 1985. Gelatin silver print, 34.9 × 23.4 cm. PH1987:0630, CCA Collection © Melvin Charney

Consultants en Aéroports Internationaux de Montréal (CAIM), Regional Site Plan of the New Montréal International Airport inside Design Manual for the Ministry of Transport, 1970. Reprographic copy inside ring binder. ARCH284358, Papineau Gérin-Lajoie Le Blanc Architectes Fonds, CCA Collection.

Lee Friedlander, two suburban houses, detail of lawn and pruned tree, unceded territory of the Onondaga and Haudenosaunee people, (Phoenix, New York), 1975. Gelatin silver print, 28.3 × 18.9 cm, PH1987:0169, CCA Collection © Lee Friedlander

Palos Verdes Homes Association, Palos Verdes Bulletin, May 1925. Ink on paper. W.P346, CCA Collection © Palos Verdes Homes Association

Landscape regeneration, Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building, Yellowknife, Nunatsiaq, Inuit Nunangat (Northwest Territories), 1991–1994. Chromogenic colour prints. ARCH278720, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds, CCA Collection, Gift of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander © Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

Playground manufacturing company workshop, 18th and Bigler Streets, unceded territory of the Lenni-Lenape people, (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 1954–1956. Gelatin silver print. ARCH284338, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander fonds, CCA Collection, Gift of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander © Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

Whatever Powers are Required

Mikwayndaasowin: Remembering that which was there before

Siting the Settler Record

Return to Past

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