2nd Year Final Show
THE MEMORY
OF A MAP
2021
- I am struck by maps. Moved by them- and in them.
I walk and walk and walk and surely there is something in that? - Something complete?
This piece has allowed for a contemplation of movement – the systemic nature of it. Through considering mapping a colonial tool to control, the way in which we engage with space is thus never neutral. How we move and the lines in which we draw as we move are a result of our colonial history. Our movements are determined by the structures, physical or not, that surround us. In this way, I explore my migrations through this understanding.
I found myself routinely walking as a way of gaining insight into this project. It felt like one big performance piece – that no one, but me, knew about. It was confusing to have walked so much and have so little to show for it. I was there - in-between, in and out of, up and down- all over really- and yet, the data collected from my walks held incomplete in relation to the lines they were capturing.
Though I experienced the movements elusively, the data acted as a kind of ‘memorialization’ of my actions. And in this, showcased the very nature of mapping- translating power and ontology. There is a language in my floating. It will always say something.
I wanted to express this in the shape of a map – in looking at it as a visual translation of person- without imposing and holding it accountable to the bounds of information.
I found myself routinely walking as a way of gaining insight into this project. It felt like one big performance piece – that no one, but me, knew about. It was confusing to have walked so much and have so little to show for it. I was there - in-between, in and out of, up and down- all over really- and yet, the data collected from my walks held incomplete in relation to the lines they were capturing.
Though I experienced the movements elusively, the data acted as a kind of ‘memorialization’ of my actions. And in this, showcased the very nature of mapping- translating power and ontology. There is a language in my floating. It will always say something.
I wanted to express this in the shape of a map – in looking at it as a visual translation of person- without imposing and holding it accountable to the bounds of information.
Through neglecting context, all I give you is a painting of a thing- in this I mean, it is not the map of my walkings, but it is shaped by them.
I find tension between what the bronze signifies - a solid tangibility used historically to assert power - and that that it is representing- professing the blur of a movement. Maintaining and so involved in its own subjectivity. A deconstruction of the map through this interplay. (Overflowing line - what does it hold? Where does it go? Do I go somewhere with it?). I made elongations out of wax and clay as lines that are yet. Potential more-ing. Potential movements.
“All texts are…embedded within chains of signification: meaning is dialogic, polyphonic and multivocal- open to, and demanding of us, a process of ceaseless contextualization and recontextualization”
[John Pickles, 2004].
This haziness continues through sound. I recorded myself, my movements and all that I moved through, as a kind of map making. The sounds hold a memory - asking the viewer to think of a map as something in the air- floating and forever changing.
I find tension between what the bronze signifies - a solid tangibility used historically to assert power - and that that it is representing- professing the blur of a movement. Maintaining and so involved in its own subjectivity. A deconstruction of the map through this interplay. (Overflowing line - what does it hold? Where does it go? Do I go somewhere with it?). I made elongations out of wax and clay as lines that are yet. Potential more-ing. Potential movements.
“All texts are…embedded within chains of signification: meaning is dialogic, polyphonic and multivocal- open to, and demanding of us, a process of ceaseless contextualization and recontextualization”
[John Pickles, 2004].
This haziness continues through sound. I recorded myself, my movements and all that I moved through, as a kind of map making. The sounds hold a memory - asking the viewer to think of a map as something in the air- floating and forever changing.
*Could you understand a map
through its sounds?* *Where did I go? What did I see?
What did my presence do in the space?*^Sewn daily walkings.