failing map

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land acknowledgement

my name is claude wittmann.

this acknowledgement brings light on some of my own history and privileges together with a reverence to the lands i have had the chance to live on and some thoughts specific to how maps connect to land and its understandings.

this acknowledgement follows the teachings of Jill Carter, Indigenous leader, researcher and theatre worker at the university of toronto, of Carmen Alvis, T'karonto-based Métis 2-spirit theatre artist and of Alec Whitewolf Butler, T'karonto-based 2-spirit playwright, filmmaker and performance artist of Mi'kmaw, French, Irish and Afro descent, originally from Cape Breton Island aka Uni'Maki aka "Island of Fog". they taught me that entering into any kind of relationship starts with acknowledging one's own history and the effort to educate oneself and deconstruct privileges.

i identify as a white settler, transgender and invisibly disabled artist whose artistic process started in T'karonto in 2003 after happily quitting academia. since 2017, this process has tried to break the barriers between the art container and real life with aiming at social change.

i have the privilege of double citizenship, in canada and in switzerland where i was born. my ancestors come from switzerland and germany. i do not know very much about the history of my family, but i can share that i am not tranquil about either part and neither am i tranquil to be a settler in T'karonto.

when in T'karonto, and together with the other artists who activate this map under the name of the dispossessed disabled artists demanding housing (ddadh), i know i have the 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.

i acknowledge to have knowledge that T'karonto/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.

i acknowledge my extremely limited capacity in respectfully enacting this treaty.

i acknowledge that i feel guilt to be a settler in T'karonto.

i acknowledge that it is during "Facing the Monumental" (2012), a performance by internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist Rebecca Belmore, who is a member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), that this guilt became tangible.

i acknowledge my great 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, i consider the possibility that we are on a territory that was never considered through an equal nation-to-nation relationship and never ceded. we live on stolen land.

i acknowledge that my repeated trials to find a safe home in T'karonto/toronto closely touch on land ownership. i largely favour public land ownership, but i acknowledge also that, be it private or public, especially in T'karonto/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.

i acknowledge that maps such as this one have served and still serve purposes of colonization. i acknowledge that the features appearing on this 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 T'karonto as our efforts to reach out to them and make sure they could benefit from our work will go.

i timidly address my apology to all Indigenous individuals involved in the project and all Indigenous communities who are still suffering.

when in switzerland, i feel that my brain is wired in german and that acquiring a german citizenship would only be normal. but, official contacts with that hope have gone nowhere. i was born when my father was already swiss and had had to relinguish his german citizenship. that makes my access to german recognition impossible. on the other hand, i do not know if members of my family have been engaged actors in the nazi agenda, but i am pretty convinced this is the case and this is a silent trickster-killer inside of my psyche.

i acknowledge that i have had the privilege to study, obtain a PhD, occupy different jobs and travel in and from switzerland.

i acknowledge that when in switzerland, the fact that i am trans and disabled activates the daily discrimination that all minority groups experience and that this tends to veil from my consciousness the privileges i embody as a white swiss-born individual.

still, i am heavily aware that switzerland tends to be seen as a beautiful, socially just, generally rich and well educated country with an exemplary democratic system and a just neutrality, but that this image is false.

i do not know if ever any community lived on the territory of current switzerland who conceived of land as sacred, shared and a true participant in life, like Indigenous communities do in canada and north-america.

historical texts speak of migration, empires, monarchies, battles, epidemics, celtic and alaman tribes, religious rituals, legendary moments, etc. they also speak of the feudal order, a punishing system in which lords owned the land and often also the people who worked on the land for them while also rendering other services.

switzerland is maybe more particularly tainted by dark chapters in its relationships with difference (there is overwhelming evidence that switzerland collaborated widely with the nazi regime during WWII; switzerland also urged germany to mark Jewish passports with a 'J' to make it easier to prevent them from entering the country; swiss banks took in more than $4 billion of assets looted by nazi SS during the Holocaust; they also took in the royalties from hitlers' book; art looted by nazis is still collected and exposed at one museum at least in zürich; the swiss economic "empire" has grown and is still growing on the shoulders of poorly treated legal and illegal foreign workers; a lot of legal foreigners are suddenly expulsed on the basis that they receive social assistance; switzerland has contributed to the colonisation agenda: a lot of missionaries and mercenaries were involved, proudly supporting terrible "civilizing" goals, through erasure, assimilation and genocide. switzerland is a shadow of the power of the multinational banks it is not shy to "save" when in trouble. it is a major player in economic globalisation and the financialization of our lives; switzerland is at the beginning only of a systemic analysis of difference. this is particularly the case regarding poverty, appropriation, migration, racism, ethno-cultural difference, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, pathologisation, ableism/"capacitisme", ageism, etc.)

i acknowledge that as a swiss citizen, i have advocated for the rights of transgender and non-binary and for disabled individuals, but not had the health and energy to address any other dark chapters.

land access ❤❤

this map is a disembodied excerpt of my struggles with displacement in toronto/T'karonto and then in switzerland. it covers 2020 to 2025. it was originally conceived in the framework of precarihousingthemap (2021-2025), a larger project that i led with support from the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council, in collaboration with the dispossessed disabled artists demanding housing in toronto/T'karonto (ddadh).

this map is on purpose utterly malfunctioning.

you will be surprised at how this map acts and at how the three panels seem to erratically speak together when you click on icons or zoom in or out. you might get annoyed at the fraught sound quality of the recordings. it might feel like i am failing you. it might feel playful. for me, it remotely points at my noise trauma, my displacement and sense of internal fracture with the belief that making this visible is a political necessity.

why choosing the aesthetic of failure?

fail, draft march 2026

failing map

i
failed
you
in the spring
of 2025.
and then i
failed at
creating the conditions for
repair.

i apologize.

is it
fair to
ask you
what (else)
you need?

is it
fair to
suggest
steps of
transformative
justice?

i see that
my brain
is
not
decolonized
but
may
i
allow
myself
to hope
that we
find
solidarity
in the conflict,
together

towards
the
decolonization
of a system
in which
we both
suffer.

in 2020,
i was near
homelessness
for 6 months.
i did much
much political work
with the other artists
in the same situation.

in 2021
a medically attested
noise overload
very near my new home
failed my health,
physical
and mental.
i could not
do much political work,
this time
and it is a long story.

in 2022
i landed
few meters away
from another
noise overload:
construction,
again.
24/7,
huge site
no end
in sight,
no political ears
for my requests.
trauma:
traces of
being
failed
by a
harsh
system.

i
recorded
the
noise
but
noise
is vibration
and
recordings
cannot
embody
vibrations
and so
my
trauma
triggers
could not
be truly met
and could not
transform
into
sound
poetry. this map can't
vibrate,
but that failure is just perfect.

failed