“Un-registered Affects” is an experimental project in search of an alternative/meta-methodology for architectural and landscape practices of siting, based in notions of “haptic history” and “haptic geography,” that proceeds through an archiving of affective and ephemeral aspects of site derived from an embodied experience of landscape. Taking two peri-urban sites in Mississauga linked together by the Credit River, I create an alternative archive for the temporal, intangible, and fleeting narratives contained in these sites, re-presenting them as a “spatial archive” to counter notions of “the cleared site” (Burns) with a model of land as record and dwelling (Ingold), and with Indigenous ontology and knowledge that land is sacred, “alive and thinking” (Watts). I argue for a re-linking of these impermanent archives to siting practices, to reconnect the body to the layered histories of land and place. Merging distant and proximal histories, my installation places Aboriginal and ‘newcomer’ narratives into relation. The histories of the land include the death of agriculture, immigrant passage/settlement, and Anishinaabe cultivation around the Credit River.
This is an artistic exploration of tensions: between architectural/mechanical models of precision and measurement, while setting these against the poetic nature of the landscape. My installation counters architectural and colonial clearing of place as a tabula rasa by engaging in processes of surveying, sampling, preserving and archiving land, in anticipation of its imminent erasure. This project is thus a cross-disciplinary exploration of architecture, landscape, geography, and artistic practice.