These 10 towering speakers tell the story of how Scarborough 'became a place'

Is Scarborough just another Toronto suburb or a "place" in its own right? For sound artist Mitchell Akiyama, it's all about "where you stand." His new piece "A cut at an edge that was always a middle," which will be installed at Nuit Blanche's Scarborough site, is about acknowledging what "the centre" means to different people.

"When you're thinking at a kind of macro level, you might think of [the old City of Toronto] as the centre and Scarborough [as the] periphery," says Akiyama. "But obviously for people who live in Scarbrough, that's their centre."

The piece is a 10-channel audio installation, featuring interviews with "people that have a really important relationship to Scarborough." Each interview will be broadcast through its own speaker, and the speaker will light up while the interview is playing. The piece will be installed on the outdoor walkway that connects Scarborough Town Centre shopping mall and Scarborough Civic Centre — Scarborough's pre-1998 amalgamation city hall.

"The point of it was to talk to a really wide swath of people," Akiyama says. And while there's a focus on cultural diversity, he says, "I'm also thinking about diversity in terms of the jobs that people have. I don't want to just talk to a diverse group of writers... It's like a tapestry."

Akiyama adds that he wants people interacting with the piece to think about "how a place becomes a place."

"In the humanities, people talk about the distinction between space and place," he says. "A space [is] something that's kind of neutral — a space can kind of be anywhere — but a place is deeply rooted in the specific land and the people who live there. Place is something that comes to be through conflict and collaboration."

Scarborough, in Akiyama's view, has more of a sense of "place" to it than a lot of other parts of the GTA. Because of a number of factors, including socioeconomic stigma and sheer distance from the city core, Scarborough has long been thought of as "marginal," but that marginalization has given rise to a unique pride.

"There's a pride that I don't think you [get] in other areas of Toronto," he says. "You don't get that kind of Mississauga pride or North York pride."

In each interview, Akiyama says he tried to capture a different aspect of the (former) city and how different people relate to it.

"I spoke to this really great artist, Bonnie Devine — she's Anishinaabe from Serpent River — and I asked her to talk about the land pre-colonization," he says. "I talked to David Chariandy, the novelist. Scarborough is the setting for most of his books, but he's been living in Vancouver for a long time, so I asked him about what a place is when you're not there, when it's the place he draws from for most of his work… I spoke to a really brilliant poet and writer called Elizabeth Mudenyo about queer life in Scarborough and how there's still a lot of work to do there."

Akiyama adds that, while Scarborough may be finally be recognized as cool by the rest of the city after years as a kind of municipal punching bag, it would be a mistake to call it a "renaissance." The former city's food, music, and art scenes aren't a new thing, as the people interviewed in "A cut and an edge that was always a middle," will attest — it's just that the rest of the city, and the world, are finally catching up.

"A cut at an edge that was always a middle" will be part of Nuit Blanche Toronto's Scarborough site (300 Borough Dr.) from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on Sept. 23.