Editorial
Issue 11
Issue 11 comes after a busy six months for the Livingmaps Network, which has recently curated Livingmaps Live, a hybrid festival of workshops, walks and discussions on the theme of creative counter-mapping, and a successful seminar series, Front Lines Back Yards, with speakers covering topics from pandemic mappings to decolonial mapping practices. In the coming weeks the network will continue this work through its Autumn series of seminars and lectures, and the launch of a new book. This issue picks up on many of these themes and continues to push them in new directions, something which has become a mainstay for contributors over the past two issues. The conversation about counter-mapping is moving on and this issue raises new questions, approaches and methods for us to consider as we do so.
Navigations features three articles. Rosie Hallam takes us on a walk around the new King’s Cross development and surrounding areas in London. Telling her story through a critically engaged sensorial photo essay, Rosie asks us to consider what happens to the narratives around urban spaces with rich and diverse histories when they are treated as a tabula rasa for redevelopment with rigid, rather than relational, social and economic goals. Juan Forero follows this with a discussion about participatory map makers in Madrid. His ethnographic account of people creating maps as a form of democratic participatory citizenship shows us that this is not a process free from politics and power, but rather a complex socio-political activity where there exists a tension between ideals of participatory mapping the reality of the task at hand. Orson Nava concludes the section with an essay arguing for ‘Grime’ video production to be considered a form of radical ethno-cartography. Drawing from his research into grime communities in East London, Nava articulates why understanding the spaces and places of music production in this culture can teach us much about its politics and cultural geographies.
In Waypoints, W.F. Garrett-Petts and Cheryl Gladu present a policy-led strategy for thinking about the long-term goals of cultural and participatory mapping. Through a discussion of their researcher-in-residence program in the City of Kamloops, where they used mapping in response to a localised opioid crisis and the social effects of Covid-19, they show the value of using maps as part of an approach to policy making and participatory citizenship that foregrounds co-development and iterative techniques. Following this, Joel and Bob Gilbert discuss some of the challenges and contradictions of becoming more aware of our biodiverse world at the very same time as our destruction of it continues at pace. Through their essay of personal experience and urban case studies, they highlight how cities can be places to bridge the nature/culture divides that have become entrenched in society.
In Mapworks, Claire Reddleman presents Ways of Seeing the Penal Colony, which gives us a new perspective on the French penal colonies of New Caledonia and French Guiana. By using collaging techniques that bring together archival maps and photographs with present day maps, GPS traces and souvenirs, the work highlights the relations and tensions existing between the devastation of colonial incarceration and its ties to France, the mundane reality of everyday life during this time, and the modern identity these islands have as tourist destinations.
In Lines of Desire, Barbara Lounder uses her Covid-19 wonderings to trace the life of Corona Isabel Walker, a local and largely unrecognised resident of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, who died in 1889. By using maps and archival material in conjunction with walking in the city, Barbara outlines an innovative method for getting to know a person through social, material, embodied and affective forces. Following this, Phil Cohen presents an interview with Sonia E Barratt, which details how maps are used in her work to highlight the relationalities of British colonisation in the Americas. At the centre of this conversation is the Dread Maps project from the Map-lective, which used hair dreading techniques as a way to rework colonial maps in the map room of the Royal Geographical Society in order to reshape our perspective on maps in relation to this place at the heart of the British empire.
Finishing this issue in Point Nemo, Phil Cohen contends with the complex interplay between human and non-human relations in contemporary society, and what cats in particular can teach us about the problems raised by Euclidean cartography and bounded notions of space…
As always, thank you to all of our contributors and editors for making this publication possible. It’s a great achievement each and every time. Please also note that our call for contributors for a special issue in Autumn 2022 is still open and we welcome proposals from those that are interested. More information can be found here.
Mike Duggan
Editor-in-Chief
October 2021