ddadh has declared failure

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this map is part of precarihousingthemap, a larger project activated by the dispossessed disabled artists demanding housing in Toronto/T'karonto (ddadh).

we declare we have been failed.
why?

this map has had a specific goal: to convince Workman Arts (WA), an organization that supports artists like us, to take meaningful action towards safely housing its artist members. this goal has been part of our work since 2021. it has been and still is our "utopia", not in the sense of an imagined place that can't exist, but in fact, as a simple manifestation of WA taking its responsibility in the realization of our basic human right to housing, a right that is enshrined in the Canada National Housing Strategy since 2019.

it is now december 2023.

we have worked for 2.5 years. we have done a housing survey of 70 artists in 2021, live-streamed a discussion panel at Being Scene (2021), contextualized and published the results of our survey on our website; we have participated in meetings; we have written letters, emails, housing proposals including a detailed vision for a new housing worker and long-term housing strategist at WA; we have also applied for and obtained 2 art grants, one from the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) and one from the Toronto Arts Council (TAC); we have created this online map, crowd-sourced stories; we have applied to be present with this work at Being Scene 2023 and Rendez-vous with Madness Festival 2023 but we were rejected at both.

we observe that there is no visible progress made by WA towards our goal.

there is a wall between us and WA that is revealing itself as not climbable from our side.

in the context of Toronto's housing system, WA has failed us.

we have been failed

we recognize that
we have been failed.
so, now what?

we go to the next step: we reclaim our sanity. we reclaim our agency. we ponder. we discover the artistic and political potential of practicing an "aesthetic of failure". we try to follow its principles for our last steps in this project.

you choose an aesthetic of failure when....

- on purpose you decide to not comply with the standards of the mainstream. Marcus Bell (2021), in "INFERNO: Catastrophically Queer", suggests that "queer lives are in constant conversation with failure", exploring the possibility of failing under the norms while emerging with other norms, such as caring, loving, non-judging, norms outside of the binary of gender and outside of the binary of failure and success. in some way, choosing an aesthetic of failure is a utopian act.

- this means that if as an artist you experience an unintended rejection by your public or your art critics, you experience failure, but you did not practice an aesthetic of failure.

- practicing an aesthetic of failure is an "enactment of the very impossibility to gain a perspective on failure" (Arielli, 2021). in that sense, failure is not talked about. it is in the process; it is performed; it deconstructs the norms outside and inside. it inevitably changes something.

- about the aesthetic of failure, with links:

- "The anxieties of control and the aesthetics of failure" by Emanuele Arielli (2021)
- Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure, by Sara Jane Bailes (2011)
- "On Failure" (Performance Research volume 17 issue 1, 2012)

if you are an author,

you practice an aesthetic of failure when you deliberately produce work that does not meet literary expectations.

"L'innommable"/"The Unnamable" by Samuel Beckett is the last in a trilogy of books which started with "Molloy" and continued with "Malone meurt" ("Malone Dies"). Beckett wrote "L'innommable" between 1949 and 1950, just after the 3 months he spent writing "En attendant Godot"/"Waiting for Godot". He wrote it in French and published it in 1953. He then translated it in English by himself and this version was published in 1958. "L'innommable"is said to be a prime example of a writing practice absolutely committed to an aesthetic of failure.

It is not only that the character fails at something, in other words, is failed by their context. It is also that in the end the narrator and the author dissolve, stripping the text from familiar anchors into literary rules.

here are some of our readings of texts by Beckett.

what about Bertolt Brecht?
existentialists?
what about Franz Kafka?

Brecht and existentialists might be figures whom we would want to connect with an aesthetic of failure. but, in their work, the failing characters stay free while experiencing the absurd. such authors are "thematising" failure. they are not practicing an aesthetic of failure.

Franz Kafka did not practice an aesthetic of failure per se, but his work was very much about being failed. here are some of our readings of Kafka's "The Castle"

if you are a performer,

you practice an aesthetic of failure if you break away from the expectations of what performing is, or, enact for example, the inconclusiveness of an action or the impossibility of a task.

examples:

artist links to documentation year of the work

Keith Cole "Keith Cole announces Toronto mayoral bid" 2010

goat island "impossible dances, in "The Sea & Poison"
- "News from Nowhere: Goat Island Performance Group""
by Sara Jane Bailes (2011) 1998

Adriana Disman - "Untitled Fall I (Montré)
- "Untitled Fall II (Toronto) 2015

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens "Real failure needs no excuse" 2012

Maurizio Cattelan "The Aesthetics of Failure" 2011

Jeremy Wade When does performing failure become its own failure?" by RM Vaughan 2015

Thomas John Bacon Tempting Failure Festival 2018; festival exists since 2012

Jordan Tannahill Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama 2015

Theatre of the Oppressed, Forum Theatre, after Augusto Boal one of many examples:
"What is Forum Theatre"? 1970s originally

we choose an aesthetic of failure we practice it

land acknowledgement

We, who activate this map as the dispossessed disabled artists demanding housing in Toronto/Tkaronto (ddadh), acknowledge our privilege to live on traditional territory shared with us by many nations who have lived here and cared for it before and since settlers came. We live in Tkaronto/Toronto.

We acknowledge our discomfort with the 1787 Toronto Purchase, the 1805 Indenture, the 1923 Williams Treaties and possibly also with the 2010 $145 million settlement between Canada and the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation and with Treaty No. 13, because they imposed settlers' concept of land ownership and extinguished rights. In that sense, we consider the possibility that we are on a territory that was never considered through an equal nation-to-nation relationship and never ceded.

We acknowledge that our work on finding our home in Tkaronto/Toronto closely touches on land ownership. We largely favour public land ownership, but we acknowledge also that, be it private or public, especially in Tkaronto/Toronto where the City has not started a decolonizing process, land ownership does not recognize the spirit and concepts with which the land is considered and cared for by Indigenous communities, Indigenous philosophy and knowledge.

We acknowledge that maps such as this one have served and still serve purposes of colonization. We acknowledge that the features appearing on our map, such as names, addresses and wards boundaries (very different for example from Native Lands territories boundaries are there to serve our housing-related goal and that this goal is only so far attending to the needs of the Indigenous and Métis population of Tkaronto as our efforts to reach out to them and make sure they could benefit from our work will go.

We acknowledge to have knowledge that Tkaronto/Toronto is in the "Dish With One Spoon Territory".

Image of the Medicine Wheel suggested by Alec Whitewolf Butler, one of the artists behind this map who is of Mi'kmaw, French, Irish and Afro descent, originally from Cape Breton Island aka Uni'Maki aka "Island of Fog".
information about the Medicine Wheel
image credit: commonswikimedia.org

The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect.

The "Dish", or sometimes it is called the "Bowl", represents what is now southern Ontario, from the Great Lakes to Quebec and from Lake Simcoe into the United States. *We all eat out of the Dish, all of us that share this territory, with only one spoon. That means we have to share the responsibility of ensuring the dish is never empty, which includes taking care of the land and the creatures we share it with. Importantly, there are no knives at the table, representing that we must keep the peace.

This was a treaty made between the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee after the French and Indian War. Newcomers were then incorporated into it over the years, notably in 1764 with The Royal Proclamation/The Treaty of Niagara.

We acknowledge our extremely limited capacity in respectfully enacting this treaty.

The settlers among us address our apology to all Indigenous individuals involved in the project and all Indigenous communities who are still suffering.

land