reading the map

8. – 9.11.2019, Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies//// Reading the Map. An exercise (in Critical Cartography)//// Focusing on the entangled and relational character of urban spaces, established methodologies have to be rethought, revised, and rebuilt. In my contribution to the workshop I would like to reflect on collaborative and experimental ways of knowledge production, focusing on mapping as a methodological approach to understand as well as to represent urban complexity. Maps are powerful instruments of urban research. They direct our gaze towards specific questions, bringing selected phenomena to view while hiding others: maps always involve a hierarchization of information as well as an in/visibilization of narrations. While the process of producing maps has been broadly critically reflected, the process of map-reading rarely plays a role in critical analysis. After discussing some concepts of critical cartography as a methodological approach, I would like to invite the participants to an exercise on a collective reading of maps. An introduction tothe project Berlin Field Recordings. Mapping along the Refugee Complex.

Part of the Workshop  “ Migration transdisciplinary: Art historical migration research and beyond“ organized by the „Network Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents“

The workshop „Migration transdisciplinary” focusses on the critical reflection and enhancement of art theoretical and art historical perspectives through the discussion of recent approaches of migration research, especially in the field of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and Cultural Anthropology (Gupta/Ferguson 1992; Malkki 1992; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. 2016; Sigona 2015). We intend to adapt questions about the forms and techniques of (trans)national governance of migration, to the discussion on “migration narratives from below”, up to alternative mappings of migration research for art studies.

Building on art historical approaches to documentation, description of materials and the analysis of concepts related to identity politics (see Gender Studies Held/Pohl 1984; Albrecht/Below/Kahre 2001) on the one hand, and an empirical cultural studies approach on the other hand, the aim is to develop an interdisciplinary method of analytically approaching the migration of artists and their art production on a micro and macro scale.

In order to not only examine the phenomenon of migration in terms of artistic production, a shift of perspectives for a relational analysis is appropriate. This is to consider respective conditions and experiences of migration so that the multi-layered translocal and transcultural conditions, reasons and consequences of migratory movements for both, the artists and their practices, can be differentiated.

With our guests Monika Palmberger (Anthropology and Migration Studies, Vienna), Darshan Vigneswaran (Political Studies and Migration and Ethnic Studies, Amsterdam) and Kathrin Wildner (Urban Studies and Anthropology, Hamburg), the planned workshop builds on this research desideratum and asks for the meaning, applicability and possible transdisciplinary transfer of these theoretical and methodological implications for the art theoretical and praxeological analysis of global migration.

How can we describe and analyse visual sources in this light? How are geographically and subjectively heterogenous experiences of migration framed? Which role do institutionalization and spatialization strategies play in regard of artistic migration and the reflection of mobility and space through artistic interventions? And in which form can analytical and empirical approaches from the social and cultural studies be applied in art studies in order to examine the relationship of art and migration without succumbing to neither a reification of cultural particularity nor to a universalizing rhetoric on globality and artistic practice? In order to explore these questions, the workshop will hold a methodological debate on the possible links between different data forms for the purpose of new ways of archiving, collaborating and publishing (“cultural mapping” Roberts 2012; “walk-along” Kusenbach 2003; “sensory anthropology” Pink 2010). It will also reflect current efforts to include artists and their research-bases practices in empirical research (Leavy 2009; Barone und Eisner 2011; Schneider und Wright 2013; Brosius 2017).

Quelle  der Karte: Abschnitt aus  Entwicklungsländern – und Maßnahmenprogramm Senator  für Stadtentwicklung und Umweltschutz Abt. III, Berlin 1984