Collaborative Performances of Resistance in Twenty-First Century Toronto: Occupy Toronto and The Encampment

• Published in: Journal of Canadian studies 2015-04, Vol.49 (2), p.205-226
• Main Author: Terry, Andrea
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 21st century; Art galleries & museums; Artists; Camps; Censorship; Collaboration; Essays; Globalization; Material culture; Occupations; Park, James; Political activism; Politics; Social activism; War
• ISSN: 0021-9495; 1911-0251
• DOI: 10.3138/jcs.49.2.205

This essay examines connections between protest camps and artist interventions in the Canadian context, focussing on two cases. In October 2011, Occupy Toronto organizers set up a protest camp in St. James Park as part of a global movement in 950 cities to decry the effects of global capitalism. Six months later, another collective set up an artistic occupation consisting of 200 A-frame tents called The Encampment at Fort York National Historic Site. This intervention recast the military fort, which conventionally operates as an open-air living history museum depicting the social and military history of the War of 1812, as a space that showcased the war’s civilian history. The author approaches each as a space of convergence dependent upon the calculated co-ordination of people and tents to signal calls for change. The author also takes into account significant differences between the two camps in that Occupy Toronto was a hard intervention that was ultimately evicted by order of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, while The Encampment was a soft one, co-commissioned by the city.