ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Maraya, a collaborative art/research project that the coauthors have been involved with since 2007. Conceptually and aesthetically, Maraya takes up the challenge of critical reflection, of wanting to know and represent 21st century urbanization by exploring opportunities for exchange. Maraya seeks to examine and perform patterns of neighborliness that are conversant with the global urbanism of a Dubai-Vancouver connection. After a year and a half of negotiations with the Museum of Vancouver (MOV), Maraya was given the opportunity to build an installation that appropriated the idea of construction hoarding to create a space, a metaphorical stage, for extended conversations about the nature and experience of contemporary urban life. The site is not so much a map as an unfolding exploration of social mapping. As a shared endeavor to visually represent a collective sense of an emergent urban, the site provides information about the project and public programming.
