What was, is, and might be: Cartography on Arctic Shores

在加拿大最大的流域之一的入海口，经过北极圈，另一场夏末的风暴从浑浊的水域掀起汹涌的海浪。海岸线遭到无情的破坏，数百米的永久冻土滑入变暖的海洋。麦肯齐三角洲深切感受到气候危机，在那里的社区可以看到科学、政治和其他方面的强烈关注。各种各样的科学家和研究人员在冰原和苔原上爬行，忙着测量、测绘和记录这片几乎被冲走的景观。用地震仪和无人驾驶飞机武装起来的科学家、土著长老和传统知识的持有者如何（重新）从描述和文化上、从过去和未来来构建世界？制图学必然具有代表性，而绘制地图的过程充满了复杂的问题。无论有意无意，每个地图制作者都带有自己的偏见和假设。然后，这些代表以无数种方式被使用，形成了一个许多消费地图的人永远不会访问的地方的政策、意见和概念。该项目旨在更好地概念化制图的力量及其与地点的关系，其任务是调查每一层意义。与我在西北地区的硕士研究期间建立的联系一起，这个项目将通过探索（重新）绘制北极地区的地图以及这种强烈的本地化地图调查的结果来进行。为此，我将与图克托亚图克周围地区的长期永久冻土测绘项目联系起来。在建立这些联系的基础上，我将与绘制和测量该地区的不同专家以及经常帮助他们并以自己的方式绘制土地的当地人进行整合。我们的目的是让那些最科学地制作地图的人开始这个项目，然后向外扩展到那些从事更世俗的地图制作过程的人。通过参与观察和纪实摄影的双重镜头，我将“向上研究”，以扭转科学认可账户的假设价值（Nader, 1972）。在不重视一种地图认识论的情况下，探索一个特定地点的多种表现形式是如何被创造出来的，将为地图的还原和创造性元素以及不同认识论的独特结果提供有价值的见解。

At the mouth of one of Canada's largest watersheds, past the Arctic Circle, another late summer storm churns swelling waves from murky waters. Relentlessly, the shoreline is battered and hundreds of meters of permafrost slump into a warming sea. The climate crisis is being felt deeply in the MacKenzie Delta and intense attention - scientific, political, and otherwise - can be witnessed in the communities there. The pingos and tundra crawl with all manner of scientists and researchers, busily measuring, mapping, and documenting a landscape that is quite literally washing away. How do scientists armed with seismometers and drones, indigenous elders, and traditional knowledge holders, (re)construct the world both descriptively and culturally, both past and future? Cartography is necessarily representative, and the process of making a map is laden with the complications that entails. Each mapmaker carries with them, intentionally or not, their biases and assumptions. These then become the representations used in a myriad of ways, shaping policy, opinions, and conceptions of a place many who consume the map will never visit. This project, in the aim of better conceptualizing the power of cartography and its relation to place, will have as its mission the investigation of each of these layers of meaning. Working with contacts developed during my Master's research in the Northwest Territories, this project will be conducted through the exploration of the (re)mapping of this region of the Arctic and the consequences of such intensely localized cartographic inquiry. To do so, I will connect with a long term permafrost mapping project in the area surrounding Tuktoyaktuk. Building off these contacts, I will integrate myself with different experts mapping and measuring the region, as well as the locals who often assist them and map the land in their own ways. The intention is to begin this project with those who take the creation of cartographic objects the most scientifically, and to move outwards towards those who engage in more mundane processes of map-making. Through the dual lenses of participant observation and documentary photography, I will "study-up" to reverse the assumed value of scientifically sanctioned accounts (Nader, 1972). Without valuing one cartographic epistemology over another, exploring how multiple representations of a specific place are created will provide valuable insight into the reductive and creative elements of maps as well as the unique consequences of different epistemologies.