making the map

Making the Map is a collaboratively devised public performance exercise that aims to enact embodied dialogues centred on local geography. it consists of a large-scale map of the specific location in which the performance is being exercised. in the case below, Chicago neighbourhoods and public transportation lines in the city. The social performance utilizes the notion of play through a board game scenario, using a “questionnaire spinner” to coax narrative expressions of geographic interaction out of the passersby who are invited to enter and exit the game of their own volition. One participant spins the spinner, which in this case had eight prompts ranging from “Where do you hear about most on the news?” to “Where would you take a date?” The prompts were carefully selected to precipitate storytelling that navigated both imaginary and material relations to various localities among a range of experiences from fear to joy. Once the spinner is spun, all participants move to a location on the map that corresponds with the spinner’s prompt. Participants then share their answers to the question. In the spirit of collaborative learning, we hope this project “crowdsources” various, incomplete geographic knowledge to produce a more full, diverse, and collective map in the minds of participants. The map itself allows the performance to uniquely represent and toy with embodied spatiality and serves as a temporary archive of this local knowledge. This geographic, dialogic approach proves to be a promising tactic to promote and recuperate an effective politics of openness, association, and markedly local ethics. Making the map has been conducted in Chicago, Illinois; Mexico City, Mexico; and Cape Town, South Africa.