How to queer the map
Interview with Lucas LaRochelle
Part 1
Lucas LaRochelle is a designer and researcher whose work is concerned with queer and trans digital cultures, community-based archiving, and artificial intelligence. They are the founder of Queering the Map, a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space. Fem Urban Sandbox talked to Lucas, and this interview consists of two parts. In the first part Lucas talked about their background, the original idea behind the project, what it means to queer the space and how this project can be used by urban planners. In the second part we talked about the exhibition dedicated to the project, how AI helps to generate new speculative queer stories and what is queer futurity.
— Could you please tell us a little bit more about your background and how you came up with the idea of creating the project Queering the Map?
— My academic background is in Design and Computation Arts, which I studied at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke (or Montreal). When I started that program, my primary interest was in wearable technology – particularly how digital technology changes the body’s relationship to physical space, infrastructure and architecture. Developing Queering the Map as a web platform – rather than a wearable – was a departure from my initial work, but came from a similar line of inquiry.
I started the project in 2017, and the idea emerged during a bike ride through Parc Jeanne-Mance in Tiohtià:ke (or Montreal). I passed by the place where I had met someone that I would eventually fall in love with, which is also the place where I had a relatively explosive coming out as trans* non-binary. It was a site that was haunted by overlapping scenes of queer and trans becoming.
I was interested in that site particularly because it was outside of a space that might be understood as a queer space in terms of the urban planning of Montreal, a city with a specific LGBTQ+ neighborhood called The Village. As I continued to mentally map the sites that held lingering queer and trans affect for me, I realized that they were predominantly outside of what we might usually consider queer spaces – places like bars, clubs, bathhouses or bookstores. Most of what had continued to resonate with me were not spaces of consumption – they were nowhere places, micro places, places in between other places.
I started the project in 2017, and the idea emerged during a bike ride through Parc Jeanne-Mance in Tiohtià:ke (or Montreal). I passed by the place where I had met someone that I would eventually fall in love with, which is also the place where I had a relatively explosive coming out as trans* non-binary. It was a site that was haunted by overlapping scenes of queer and trans becoming.
I was interested in that site particularly because it was outside of a space that might be understood as a queer space in terms of the urban planning of Montreal, a city with a specific LGBTQ+ neighborhood called The Village. As I continued to mentally map the sites that held lingering queer and trans affect for me, I realized that they were predominantly outside of what we might usually consider queer spaces – places like bars, clubs, bathhouses or bookstores. Most of what had continued to resonate with me were not spaces of consumption – they were nowhere places, micro places, places in between other places.
Ultimately, I got bored thinking about my own experience. How could I use my skills as a designer and developer to build an infrastructure that invited other people into the question: What constitutes queer and trans space in a post-internet context? When I returned home from that bike ride, I started to develop the first version of what would become Queering the Map.
I put the first version of the platform online in May of 2017, at which point it held about five of my own experiences. Then a few of my friends in Tiohtià:ke (or Montreal) started to place their stories. I then took part in a residency at the Fine Arts Reading Room at Concordia University, where I set the platform up on the computers in that space. Over the course of the six months residency, stories started to populate the website. First in Tiohtià:ke, then in Tkaronto (or Toronto), then in Coast Salish Territories (or Vancouver), then in parts of the United States. When the residency concluded, there were about 600 points on the platform.
In February of 2018, the site exploded in a three day period and the number of submissions jumped from 600 to just over 6500. With this success also came opposition, and the site was spammed with pro-Trump content through a cross-site scripting attack that generated pop ups reading either “Make America Great Again” or “Donald Trump Best President”. So, I took the site down and posted a call for help, and a group of queer and trans coders assembled through the digital woodworks. Over a couple of months, we worked to implement a moderation system and increase the security of the platform overall. I relaunched the site in April of 2018 and since then it has continued to grow and expand at an astonishing rate. It is now home to over 710,000 submissions from across the world in 26 languages. Currently, around 140 000 are live on the site, with the rest still in the ever growing moderation queue. All of the content on Queering the Map is moderated by myself and a group of volunteer moderators. The process is very slow. It's emotionally laborious, in addition to being technically and physically laborious. But moderating the platform to keep it safe is the highest priority, rather than a focus on the speed of constantly updating the content.
I put the first version of the platform online in May of 2017, at which point it held about five of my own experiences. Then a few of my friends in Tiohtià:ke (or Montreal) started to place their stories. I then took part in a residency at the Fine Arts Reading Room at Concordia University, where I set the platform up on the computers in that space. Over the course of the six months residency, stories started to populate the website. First in Tiohtià:ke, then in Tkaronto (or Toronto), then in Coast Salish Territories (or Vancouver), then in parts of the United States. When the residency concluded, there were about 600 points on the platform.
In February of 2018, the site exploded in a three day period and the number of submissions jumped from 600 to just over 6500. With this success also came opposition, and the site was spammed with pro-Trump content through a cross-site scripting attack that generated pop ups reading either “Make America Great Again” or “Donald Trump Best President”. So, I took the site down and posted a call for help, and a group of queer and trans coders assembled through the digital woodworks. Over a couple of months, we worked to implement a moderation system and increase the security of the platform overall. I relaunched the site in April of 2018 and since then it has continued to grow and expand at an astonishing rate. It is now home to over 710,000 submissions from across the world in 26 languages. Currently, around 140 000 are live on the site, with the rest still in the ever growing moderation queue. All of the content on Queering the Map is moderated by myself and a group of volunteer moderators. The process is very slow. It's emotionally laborious, in addition to being technically and physically laborious. But moderating the platform to keep it safe is the highest priority, rather than a focus on the speed of constantly updating the content.
— Although it's a digital map, a lot of stories are based in a particular physical location. And sometimes you could see the scope in one place - a lot of black dots in one location. Do you think it's a process of reclaiming the space as queer and the process of rethinking the ownership of the space? Also, could you elaborate a little bit more on the concept queering the space and what it means to you.
— Queering is also about pointing out structures that don't work, and imagining how they might work differently. Queering is an action that breaks modes of relation that need to be broken, need to be reconfigured. Queering is deployed by the interface and user experience of QtM, by positioning it as an action, or a relation, rather than a fixed identity, a disruption of the normative uses of the map.
I don't see Queering the Map as ‘claiming’ space in any fixed sense. The project is about naming forms of relation that have occurred in a particular location, which is also one of the reasons why Queering the Map is not a time-based project. It is working with the idea that history is stacked, that all experience is co-present over time. It is always in relation and contestation with other forms of embodiment and experience that are happening or have happened in a place.
I don't see Queering the Map as ‘claiming’ space in any fixed sense. The project is about naming forms of relation that have occurred in a particular location, which is also one of the reasons why Queering the Map is not a time-based project. It is working with the idea that history is stacked, that all experience is co-present over time. It is always in relation and contestation with other forms of embodiment and experience that are happening or have happened in a place.
— How do you imagine the target audience of the project? On the one hand, it's a great tool to unite queer community and to share solidarity, but on the other hand, it creates a bubble of people who already know about the problem of discrimination and exclusion. Could you imagine, for example, urban planners or policymakers interacting with the map? What do you think? What kind of impact would be if you could reach out to this kind of audience?
— Queering the Map is definitely a platform by queer and trans people for queer and trans people. The broader LGBTQ2A+ community is the primary target audience in terms of sharing experience through our own words, to build transnational solidarities, to feel connected across, with and through difference.
It's not set up to be a research tool as its primary aim. However, it's been exciting to see the ways it's been studied and used in different contexts to speak to or to make claims about queer and trans life in relation to physical space. I am definitely interested in how it can be used or explored by researchers, policymakers, urban planners, etc, as a form of evidence for building more inclusive and adaptive cities, or public infrastructures. But that will always be a secondary audience that is invited to access and interact with the platform. And it is necessary that the content of the site is used ethically and respectfully regarding its primary audience and its authors.
It's not set up to be a research tool as its primary aim. However, it's been exciting to see the ways it's been studied and used in different contexts to speak to or to make claims about queer and trans life in relation to physical space. I am definitely interested in how it can be used or explored by researchers, policymakers, urban planners, etc, as a form of evidence for building more inclusive and adaptive cities, or public infrastructures. But that will always be a secondary audience that is invited to access and interact with the platform. And it is necessary that the content of the site is used ethically and respectfully regarding its primary audience and its authors.
I think Queering the Map’s usefulness for urban planners particularly is rooted in the design of the platform itself, perhaps more than the content. The claim that the project is making is the importance of considering marginalized perspectives and how marginalized people navigate public space. Queering the Map is a case study that proves that difference matters in how spaces are designed, and how people access or are not able to access certain kinds of spaces.
In terms of the content that is on the site: I think the stories themselves – and to a certain extent the ways they are distributed across the map – could be a valuable starting point for further research, but I would be wary of treating them as a primary data source without deeper consideration of their context.
In terms of the content that is on the site: I think the stories themselves – and to a certain extent the ways they are distributed across the map – could be a valuable starting point for further research, but I would be wary of treating them as a primary data source without deeper consideration of their context.
— If it's anonymous and accessible to everyone, it can be used for different kinds of purposes. I was interested in how you would react if someone, for instance, makes a queer walk in a particular location or exhibition, workshop using this content. What would be your reaction and are there rules of using the content of the website or not?
— It happens quite often that people use content and adapt it in different ways. The site is licensed under creative commons non-commercial reuse because that's its intention. It's ultimately a publication platform and the purpose of publication is to circulate this kind of content, to have this content as a public commons. It's always very exciting to me the way that other artists, designers, researchers work with and respond to the content. One of the most beautiful examples of this is the work of Aude Nasr ( عود أبو النصر ), a French-Lebanese illustrator based in Paris, who for the last year and a half has been creating illustrations based on stories from Queering the Map in the Middle East and North Africa. These regions are less densely populated on Queering the Map, and Nasr uses their skills as an illustrator to further build worlds around the stories that are there. Having Queering the Map as a public resource that we as a community share and build on with one another is really important, rather than privatizing the content.
There have also been several workshops and activations that have been organized independently of myself using Queering the Map as a starting point. I think it's a testament to the project that people feel like they have agency to use it as a tool to serve their particular community’s needs.
There have also been several workshops and activations that have been organized independently of myself using Queering the Map as a starting point. I think it's a testament to the project that people feel like they have agency to use it as a tool to serve their particular community’s needs.
(HOW TO QUEER THE MAP / part 2)