Historic Space – PROJECT TITLE: 819 Yonge (#DeadRaccoon)
Adam Swanson
My initial idea for this piece was to create a platform for a voice against the silence on indigenous women's deaths, while researching and discussing the subject I decided to change the focus more to an appropriate for myself subject matter: trans women. Trans women are being murdered at an alarming rate: here is a piece on from the online news site Planet Transgender that speaks to the overwhelming amount of murders and suicides present in the Trans woman community.
For the project itself, what I wanted to talk about was the absurdity of having a vigil for something we consider a pest (the raccoon), while this global epidemic of deaths of trans women is being ignored. I looked towards ideals of the absurd to portray this. So I planned to have a re-imagining of the raccoon's resting place last year on July 9th, but with some changes to accentuate my ideal of how absurd it is to create a vigil for this animal while trans-sisters and their deaths are being silenced.
More time would have seen me creating the memorial and, while I do find the execution to have some weight to it, I would potentially aim to brainstorm and figure out a more powerful imagery for the piece. I find the abstract concept of pointing out the absurdity of the situation to powerful but my imagery not so much as much at least.













