As a part of the New Monuments for New Cities initiative with the High Line Network, High Line research residents and Monument Lab co-founders Ken Lum and Paul Farber and The Bentway curated a speakers series entitled Theory X. Together, Monument Lab and The Bentway posed an open research question: What is your theory of Toronto?
The question was intended to invite theorization about the city through creative speculation, recollection, and reckoning. If cities are places of order, logic, balance, encounter, and data-driven policy, as we understand, they, too, are sites of profound challenge, improvisation, inequality, surveillance, and grassroots forms of knowledge. Conscious of the narratives of "smart" cities as places wired for progress and profit, this speakers series and research project sought a moment to pause, ponder, and unlock other insights regarding collective values and visions of civic identity.
The invited speakers were asked to respond to this question as it is broken down into four categories: the constitution of Publics, the historical transmission of Legacies, the recognition of Ecologies, and the striving for Belonging.
Habon Ali
Youth community advocate
Cheryl Blackman
Director of Museums and Heritage Services, City of Toronto
Mark V. Campbell
Founder, Northside Hip Hop Archive, Assistant Professor, RTA School of Media at Ryerson University
Alex Josephson
Architect and co-founder of PARTISANS
Devyani Saltzman
Director of Public Programming, AGO
Yaw Tony
Founder of Elohim Studio and Life Liveth In Me, LLiM
Quentin VerCetty
Multidisciplinary visual griot (storyteller) and art educator
Amy Wong
Artist and Angry Asian feminist