mapping antoni miralda’s honeymoon project, toronto on, winter 2023
During the thirtieth anniversay of Antoni Miralda’s global “Honeymoon Project”, this project sought to recharacterize and revitalize the work for the screen, producing a set of diagrams and mappings that sought to encapsulate its spatial logistics and recreate the spirit of romance it embodied.
This map, in pursuit of the fundamental truths of the work, identified the concept of scale as a key catalyst at each phase of the work and visualized how each of its facets operated at a number of scales, interlocked on the world stage.
Consulting critics, contemporaries, and Miralda himself, our team unearthed critical readings on the work, and in turn produced conclusions of an unseen line of reasoning, uniting the subjects of the work within an aging sociospatial architecture.
The graphics were created through investigative styles of research such as interviews and pursuit of financial records, which allowed for a comprehensive mapping of the project.
Collaborators included Micaela Russell and Gillian Clayton; the project was completed under Miles Gertler at the University of Toronto.
Labour, money, consumerism, politics, media, technology, communication, and mobility functioned as the currency of this international honeymoon. Without the global conditions which had begun to fall into place, these forces would have worked to the contrary of the project’s success. Any earlier, and the relative size of the world would have been far too large in the absence of commodity mass production and accessible transport infrastructures. Any later, and rising sociopolitical awareness around colonialism alongside rising financial disparities would have interrupted the stream of support from audiences and actors worldwide.
Though the work is not anchored to any particular city or space, it promotes a new variation of urban fabric altogether. For the first time, Miralda’s work enabled a city of the world – one that belonged to those who animated all its phases. Alongside corporations and government bodies, the people of the Honeymoon Project came together to bring two statues to life, and with them, Miralda’s visionary world grew ever closer.
