As part of my Art & Archaeology module of my MA, I worked on a collaborative drawing and mapping project.

Kitchin and Dodge (2007) suggest that “maps are constantly in a state of becoming: constantly being remade...each person engaging with a spatial representation beckons a different map into being.” Our artefacts of the mapping process contradict and ‘counter’ traditional cartography, becoming more experimental, playful and transient. An “unfolding practice,” where our counter mapping process is about “deconstructing, reading differently, and reconfiguring scientific cartography” in order “to examine alternative and new forms of mapping.”

To assume the practice of counter mapping, the group chose to consider and respond to the theme of ‘mapping the ephemeral’ through drawing and mark-making.

Inspired by the ‘Mail art’ movement which involves sending drawings, photographs and other art objects via the postal network, each member created eight single A4 ‘maps’ which they then posted on to the next member of the group. Each member agreed to draw and make marks on particular dates, enabling ephemera to be mapped simultaneously in three different locations based around the lunar calendar. The recipient could then add their own mapped layer, name and date it before posting it on to the final member of the group. The result of this process was a collaborative layering of ephemera of three separate sites on 24 circulating sheets of A4 paper, linked together by the mapping process and informed by the lunar cycle.

I combined my collection of 8 drawings using a Turkish map folding technique, playing on the traditional idea of a folded map, by making something more sculptural that can be ‘read’ or viewed in any direction. The artefact of the process of ephemeral mapping is a map in and of itself.

Worked on this project with Selma Makela and Jenny Smillie.

References:

Kitchin, R. and Dodge, M. (2007) ‘Rethinking maps’