It is not just the military or professional cartographers who produce maps. Mapping itself has become a platform that is used in all areas of life: for telling our own stories or even simply planning a trip abroad. At the same time, these processes are integrated within the developments of globalization:
“As a result, there is a growing disjuncture between the enlarged scale and fluidity of social network mapping through virtual media and the narrowing scope and fixity of lived territories and place making, linked to foreclosures of social ambition and economic opportunity for large sections of the population.”
The “Die Stadt gehört (zu) uns – ein psychogeografisches Mapping- und Radioprojekt” workshop with HLW Schrödinger will create a project with young people. The aim is to map, to develop a cartography that investigates the hierarchies and codifications of cartographic systems. Who writes city maps? Why are some places given greater importance than others? And can these codifications be transferred onto a world which every subject perceives in their own individual way?
Through discussions, interventions in public space and walks, one or more maps of the city will be produced. These will include both the discoveries of places previously unknown to the participants and a new way of experiencing familiar places. An analysis emerges: who uses this place? What are the colours, shapes, noises and languages that stand out here?
The new maps of the city of Graz developed in this way will be presented as a wall object; in addition, the participants themselves will develop a radio programme on Radio Helsinki, once more bringing together stories, descriptions and noises from the city.
Living Map Review, Livingmaps Review goes live, Editorial Team, Abstract, 2016, http://livingmaps.review/journal (last accessed: 7.3.2016).
