“Delinquent History: For Sites of Transition” is a conceptual history
project carried out as a site-specific art practice. It engages the dialectical
relationship between urban heritage and real-estate development, critically
considering how development strategically narrates history into its rationalized
logic of growth and change. This thesis revolves around four individual sitespecific
projects that quote specific histories into sites where those histories did
not originate, in order to interrogate how urban development often does the same.
The Leslie Street Spit in Toronto is taken as a case study from which to develop a
new theoretical framework called “Sites of Transition” – urban places that are in
the process of shifting from a former identity into a new one. After
contextualizing this case study and its related projects, this thesis undertakes an
examination of these elements in relation to discourse surrounding site-specific
and conceptual art practice, as well as the narration of history.