Mapping Narratives: entanglements of a socially-engaged art practice

In 2017 through 2018, I immersed myself within two cross-border communities (US-Canada) in co-creating a series of works around issues of oil extraction, transport and pollution. I wanted to explore how direct engagement might deepen the level of critical dialogue about these issues. My goal was to develop specific approaches and techniques (borrowing from cross-disciplinary methodologies) that could be re-applied in future work. By cultivating friendship and trust, could I bring the dialogue toward critical reflection and then express it through art-making? Could this dialogue then spread to the broader community through a public exhibition, potentially empowering participants to lead that dialogue with their extended communities? The exhibitions produced as a result conveyed the stories of two communities connected by the Canadian Pacific Railway: one that is a rural farming community whose lives are intertwined with the energy sector (Estevan, Saskatchewan), and the other an urban environmental justice neighborhood impacted by multiple sources of air pollution and few resources to improve their lives (South End, Albany, New York). The overall project had its successes and failures, obstacles and entanglements. The process continually raised uneasy questions for me. How do I render stories so far removed from my own experience into meaningful representations for my participants and the viewer/listener? Should I be the one capturing these stories? Does my use of cross-disciplinary methodologies lend legitimacy to the creative decisions ultimately made by me? In this paper I discuss the artwork, its process and methodologies, and the unsettling entanglements of our different backgrounds.