Editorial

Issue 16

Issue 16 of Livingmaps Review offers an expansive range of work on maps and mapping practices. Taking a step back to view it collectively shows the breadth of work we like to promote in the journal. Thanks, as always, goes to the editorial team for bringing it altogether and to our contributing authors who continue to inspire me in these pages.

In Navigations, returning contributor Doug Specht provides an excellent analysis on the maps of war, focusing in on how key features such as scale, colour and borderlines shape our perception of what is happening where in conflicts around the world. Going beyond simply ‘deconstructing the map’, Specht develops an innovative theory – inspired by the works of Paul Cézanne – to help us make sense of how we project onto the blank spaces of the map.

In Waypoints, Allie Rutherford presents an illustrated excerpt from a conversation about the Pouring Out, Pouring In exhibition at the Glasgow Women’s Library, which set out to visualise through creative mapping the complex nature of work and care for women working in multiple low paid employment (MLPE) in the UK. Notable here is the way that non-standard creative mappings can be used to foster meaning-making for those involved in producing them, which is a quality many of our readers can attest to.

Also in Waypoints, Samantha Brummage discusses the Portalis Pilot Project, which was designed to connect Southeastern Ireland and West Wales through Mesolithic archaeology using the Humap mapping interface. The project shows how Humap can be harnessed to provide new forms of interactive engagement with Mesolithic archaeology, but Samantha cautions us to consider how these forms of knowledge engagement - through the map - are contingent on short cycles of heritage funding. Thus she speaks not only to the power of maps, but also to the limitations of research projects where maps are an outcome.

Bill Finnegan, Tina Fawcett, Anya Gleizer close out Waypoints by presenting their reflections on the Museum of Climate Hope, an education focused participatory mapping project designed to encourage young people to engage with the issues of climate change through discovering objects and interactive mapping. Centring on ‘pedagogies of hope’ rather than fear, the project highlights just how important framing is to how we present the challenges of climate change to young people. Moreover, the authors mixed methodology shows us that whilst interactive mapping technologies provide novel ways to engage with our world, there is still great value in the physical objects we think about the climate with.

In Mapworks, Roberley Bell presents her project Reading Poems 26 Walks in Malmö, which documents the daily process of mapping her walks onto tracing paper, culminating in a composite stack of movement maps. There are similarities here to the work of GPS artists recording their movement and journeys, but I encourage readers to look a little closer. There are distinct differences between the freedoms and affordances that emerge, for instance, when we map from memories of walking the city compared with mapping from GPS traces.

Also in Mapworks is an edited interview with I did with Debbie Kent, Jina Lee and Kimbal Bumstead, all long time contributors to Livingmaps. We came together to discuss why they became involved in the project, how they developed their interests in maps and counter-mapping, and how mapping continues to inform their arts practice. In this wide ranging conversation, we covered topics from our counter-mapping philosophies to the limits of the map.

In Lines of Desire, Mel Anie introduces us to PS Walks, which is an ongoing series of interlinked and co-created walks described as ‘a form of international chain-linked poetry in motion.’ Mel describes how intimate and international connections can be made through walking, photography and social media. At once the project shows us how walking can be a collective and individual practice, and how the geographies of distance and time bend with, but nonetheless still matter, in our digital world.

Also in Lines of Desire, Dr Georgios Varoutsos discusses his sound walking project, Sounding Covid-19. This work takes us back to consider the ways that Covid-19 lockdowns shaped the audible experiences of the city. Through description and a sound repository, Georgios shows us that this difficult time was not simply marked by a lack of movement and contact, but by new (or perhaps otherwise obscured in ‘normal times’) sensory environments. Like much of the sound art produced in these pages, Sounding Covid-19 encourages us to consider the sensory dimensions of place, which are all too often backgrounded in the daily rhythms and routines of urban life.

Finally, a very special thanks to Aldo de Moor, for locating the back issues (1-8) of journal from the murky depths of cyberspace. It was long thought these were lost to time, but through Aldo’s efforts I can now announce that these are / will be available on this site from now on. Issues 1-4 are already available, with 4-8 on their way soon.

Mike Duggan

Editor-in-Chief

April 2024