Art
Julie Arménio, Ru’Elles Company,
Anthropology
Karine Gatelier, Modus Operandi,
Geography
Lise Landrin, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble, PACTE, 38000 Grenoble, France,
Geography
Claire Revol, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble, PACTE, 38000 Grenoble, France
We are a composite collective, Julie Arménio (artist), Karine Gatelier (anthropologist within the association Modus Operandi), Lise Landrin (doctor of geography at the Pacte laboratory, UGA), and Claire Revol (Lecturer at Pacte laboratory, UGA). We have explored the potential of sensorial maps, notably in student workshops (Arménio et al., 2021) with twofold objective: reestablish the lived experience of a lived pathway through a given space in order to, first, decipher it; and in turn using it as tool for theatre or dance composition.
Sensitive Maps for a Critical Geography
The map is probably the geographer’s tool par excellence, with which the discipline has aspired to establish itself as the science of territories. Since the 1970s, critical studies of geography have been deconstructing the idea of an objective cartography; today, it is common knowledge that maps are ways of representing the world and that they open the way to various interpretations. If the goal of critical cartography consists in showing the way in which the map is an instrument of power, sensorial cartography, for its part, acknowledges that our perceptions and lived experiences of space are irredeemably situated.
These days, a number of collectives have been created in France as well as abroad in order to encourage research between geographers, artists, and inhabitant collectives on the subject of sensorial mapping as a tool for mediating our different relations to space and situated power relationships.
The particular interest of this cartographic production lies in the fact that it is not conceived of as a representation of previously acquired knowledge, but rather as an occasion for learning and observation that reveals our concrete sensibilities – emotions, feelings, fears, desires that emerge in the course of our daily or exceptional crossings of space. To make a sensitive map is to take interest in the cartographic gesture that, in drawing, reveals that which makes up our relation to a space. And if the result of the map is not readily accessible to everyone, it is because every relationship to space is situated, demanding to be contextualized, elaborated, and shared. The creation of a sensorial map thus also becomes an occasion for encounters and of decentering in order to comprehend the logic of the Other and participate in the production of knowledge.
An Original Creation: The Carto-Stratum
Based on an original idea from Julia Arménio, we have experimented with carto-stratum (carto-strates). This idea rests on the principle of a palimpsest space, made up of several layers of meaning. Not only is space sprinkled with traces of history but, in the span of a single day, space is composed of movements, boundaries, activities, the living and the non-living. The principle of superimposing different layers allows us to focus our sensitivity on these combined elements in turn, to see how they fit together with dissonances, the disruptive effects and the logic of avoidance in the explored space.
This carto-stratum is based on a process, divisible in four stages:
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The practice of an observation or of a drift in a defined space, which may last anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, with attentional constraints on a chosen dimension;
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The writing and drawing of an individual or collective layer at the end of each sequence;
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The sharing of maps thus produced within a collective in order to decipher and unveil the spaces, their perceptions, and their gestures;
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The use of the map at different stages of composition in order to locate performance sites, or to specify gestures and specialties in accordance with an observation.
The map can be used for itineraries of different scales, from the scale of a tramway to that of an entire neighborhood. The carto-stratum is a precious asset of observation, analysis, and incorporation of urban spaces that allows us to reconstitute a journey of the senses and an assemblage of research on traversed space. It is also a stimulating driving force of creation for theatrical, dance, and performance composition practices.
Cite this item: Julie Arménio, Karine Gatelier, Lise Landrin, Claire Revol, “Sensitive Mapping”, translated by Caroline Schlenker, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2022, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177603
