Context: The conceptual framework for this project was to choreograph a daily practice of Land and Labor Acknowledgement through spatial design. The University of Minnesota campus sits on stolen land and continues to celebrate oppressive legacies through the refusal to revoke building names that honor racists and discriminating college administrators. In response to this, how can we shift, if even in the smallest way, our daily ritual and performance of entering space toward justice, by designing spatial interventions at campus building thresholds? 

This work is a spatial and literal response to the question, Professor Ananya Chatterjea asks, “what is the door in which we enter the work?” It is interested in designing a space that shifts the way we move through building thresholds to actively honor the land and people of the Dakota and Anishinaabe and the lives and labor of Black people in not only building this place but in dismantling systemic racism. 

After learning more about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and how it intersects with dance from Alice Shepard (Kinetic Light), Laichee was inspired by ramps and how it they have become a site of contestation. This project also emerges from the experience Laichee has working with the artist in residency for MnDOT, Marcus Young, on his project which created a Land Acknowledgement Confluence Room in the MnDOT building.