Yasmine Abbas is involved in a book project Taking from, leaving in, moving on by the Austrian architect and artist, Renate Mihatsh

Her contribution will be about neo-nomads whom she defines as “individuals constantly on the move who construct and reclaim a sense of belonging to places through digital means.” She argues that technology allows people to recreate a sense of place and notes that neo-nomads “sample cultures and the urban environments they roam in to reuse in the creation of a comfortable, personal and movable space.” Technology seems to allow people to carry with them, in their laptops, Iphone, Ipod, or any other portable devices, as well as by allowing access to various platforms, much more than one could put in a box, a bag or a suitcase. Our letters, packs of photos, favorite CD (or tape)… can be saved “online”. Yet, what is then the evocative object? The content or the object which allows to store or gives us access to the storage place?

Related to the theme of the suitcases, an interesting exhibition on immigrants: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2009/mar/11/communities-immigration?picture=344441838

I just wanted to share an interesting book by Katherine Harmon in which she presents many different types of maps - real and imaginary. She wrote in introduction to the book: “I sense that humans have an urge to map - and that this mapping instinct, like our opposable thumbs is part of what makes us human. (…)

Maps intrigue us, perhaps none more than those that ignore mapping conventions. These are maps that find their essence in some other goal than just taking us from point A to point B. They are a vehicle for the imagination, fuelled up and ready to go. We look at these maps, and our minds know just what to do: take the information and extrapolate from it a place where they can leap, play, gambol - without that distance province of our being, the body, dragging them down.” (p.10-11).

Reading these lines, I was wondering if that was true only of maps, or if this could also be true of texts - novels, poems, etc. that can let our minds wonder… and maybe leads us to create our private maps which are referred to by Hall (whose essay is published in the book):

“We are all creating our private maps. Like Mercator, we are not discovering entirely new worlds; rather, we are laying a new set of lines down on a known but changing world, arranging and rearranging metaphysical rhumbs [compass points] that we associate with successful navigation. To each, her or his private meridians. To each, a unique projection.”

Reading Hall’s and  Harmon’s quotes in the light of our discussion on physical and virtual spaces, I asked myself if the choice of virtual space, and the frequent metaphors to maps (site maps, navigation, etc.) is not related to our attraction to maps. Of course, it also points to the constructed aspect of space, and how many layers can be intertwined in our experiences of spaces (physical and virtual). One visitor was telling me the other day that the installation made him thought of how in some ways despite his physical embodiment, his attention is most of the time focused on virtual spaces (emails, chat, blogs, online forums) in which he interacts, often several at the same time… and how he realized that he thought of himself as more present to these spaces that the physical space he was located - a theme richly documented by Turkle (1995).

Last, Harmon’s book contains several examples of maps made of text : Howard Horowitz’s maps  and Edwin Morgan’s map of Scotland which of course resonate in the context of this conversation on space and discourse.

al

Re-reading the introduction of Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists by Anselm Strauss (1987) for my Ph.D seminar on Qualitative Methods, I noted this quote by Dewey (who did not conceive artistic and scientific activities as radically different):An “expression of the self in and through a medium, constituting the work of art, is itself a prolonged interaction issuing from the self with objective conditions, a process in which both of them acquire a form and order they did not first possess” (Dewey, 1334, p.65)and Strauss adds: “In short, the researcher, if more than merely competent, will be “in the work” - emotionally as well as intellectually - and often will be profoundly affected by experiences engendered by the research process itself.” (p. 10).An interesting analogy between the work of the researcher and the worker of the artist, or maybe of their relationship to their work, their engagement with their practice. Moreover, this is one of these quotes that just say in “better words” the way you feel about a specific experience, in this case my work.   al

While reading Yasmine’s post on the situationists and the “psychogeographical” maps (February 2nd), it reminded me of a book by Latour, Paris, Invisible City.

In this book which mixes photos and texts, Latour takes on a journey beyond “Paris, the City of Light”, reminding us how beneath the surface, there are always much more going on and highlighting the complex networks of people, artifacts and socio-material practices that “make” a city. This is a great exercise of “thick description” (Geertz, 1973).  It reminds me also of Becker’s description of art worlds (1982): Artistic work, like all human activities, depends on the joint activity of a number of people. Producing an artwork requires more than just an artist; it requires an idea, a manufacturing/distributing network, time, money, “support” apparatus, an audience, critics, training, and civil order (Becker, 1982).

In some ways, Aileen and I are also aiming to develop a “thick description”, a good understanding of  the relationships between physical spaces, virtual spaces and interactions. (more…)