The Map Is the Territory: On Lucas LaRochelle’s Queering the Map

As long ago as 1931, Polish-born American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase “the map is not the territory.”¹ Inherent in this famous negation is a logic of representation that insists on the original in assessing the worth and legibility of the reproduction. As we know, the map is an authoritative record keeper, a coded, colonial tool to pursue a rational, scientific understanding of the natural and social world; Korzybski’s truism epitomizes the linear, functional perspective by which maps guide the user to a specific destination—or orientation. Reading a map requires navigating signs and symbols and thus depends on the endless repetition of norms and conventions, such as “beginning” and “end,” “real” and “copy,” “true” or “false,” “map” and “territory.” In contrast to this reading method, Queering the Map (QTM), an ongoing community counter-mapping platform by Montreal-based artist and designer Lucas LaRochelle, unfolds the possible meanings of negating Korzybski’s negation by challenging these binaries—digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ memories, moments, and histories in relation to the cyber and physical worlds.

Using digital mapping technology, QTM breaks down barriers between map-maker and user, creator and spectator—map and territory—by collectively charting geographically dispersed individuals and experiences. The pale-pink and periwinkle interface preserves LBGTQ2IA+ life by reads one in Livno, a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina—to the heartbreaking: “falling in love with a guy for the first time but he never loved me back” one says in Bandung, Indonesia. Also: declarations of trans identity in Mongolia’s capital of Ulaanbaatar—“July 2008, in the airport at 3am. I realized I didn’t want to be a man—I already was one, I just needed somebody else to believe me”—and narratives of medical transition in Linköping, Sweden: “I woke after top surgery here three years ago, aching but ecstatic because my upper body finally looked like it should have from the beginning.”