ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three WalkingLab projects that re-map – as a form of counter-cartography – erased and neglected histories. Many artists and social science researchers deploy counter-cartographical approaches to map against dominant power structures, question the assumptions that conventional maps produce, and recognize different spatial knowledge systems. For the WalkingLab iteration of this ongoing project, Johnson collaborated with the Weeksville Heritage Centre in Brooklyn to execute a community walk complicating the narrative of redlining and the way that this policy continues to haunt the landscape today. Geopolitical borders are social and physical constructions that paradoxically connect and divide. Borders mark out racialized territories and restrict the movement of people, animals, and pathogens. Current global border fortification projects are fueled by heightened concerns about migration. Archival practices, like mapping, have excluded and erased Indigenous and Black bodies. Mapping is a longstanding subject for walking artists and social science researchers.
