Shoes are extraordinary media

Honourable Mention

Shoes are extraordinary media. They collect, document, and encode traces of place, bearing silent witness to where we've been. My two pairs of Nike Air Force 1s—one worn on PEI, Canada and the other on Île de la Cité, Paris—carry imprints of two vastly different island environments. On PEI, sandstone soil leaves its mark: iron oxide saturates the ground, producing the island’s signature red (Rust #b7410e). Each step deepens the connection between land and wearer, an unintended archive of place. In Paris, shoes accumulate a different record—grime and soot from centuries-old limestone streets, layered with residues of the city’s past and present (Tobacco #7A5A49). Here, the shoe picks up what it will: dust, pollution, and the organic smatterings of urban life. These shoes, identical at purchase, have become distinct. One red-stained, the other sooty—each a material reflection of their respective island. In McLuhan’s Global Village, trends and products flow freely across borders, yet even the most globalized objects develop local particularities. Like cultural artifacts, shoes gather stories as they move through space. In their wear and weathering, they offer an unconventional means of ethnographic fieldwork—capturing the convergence of geography, materiality, and the unseen forces that shape our everyday landscapes.