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"Residency"
As I’m drawing here, I’m also doing some mapping. I think this will all become part of a book soon, but I’m not sure yet how that will play out. Something about time-based media and the urge to record experience.
When I think about maps, especially geographical diagrams, I tend to think about outlines and borders. If you consider a map primarily in its role as a record of some kind of experience and step away from the idealistic impulse to control or predict, you start to wonder how to record phenomena that are in motion. As I’m making these diagrams I’m forcing myself to consider the places that are transitional and try to give them momentary shape.
Places like shorelines and rocky beaches with nothing built on them.
At the same time, I’m conscious of pretending to have a bird’s-eye view of the world. Every map is a lie, of course.
And maps as diagrams of experience are even more unpredictable and untrustworthy than drawings.
Every day I do a little mapping.
Some things I know:
- When people in Bombay say “it’s gotten cold”, this corresponds to a physical air temperature that is just the slightest bit below what it takes to make me sweat profusely.
- The sounds of the Adhan from a nearby mosque will always make me feel a shiver of joy and a sense of calm. Here it punctuates my working time.
- Chai and coffee are not the same thing when you wake up in the morning. I love the chai, don’t get me wrong, but it is not coffee.
- There’s a difference between a City and a Village, and it’s not the size of the urban agglomeration.
- Mapping presents a serious challenge when you continually want to know more and more about a place. The best way to produce a map is to turn off your brain, note down what you think you know, and don’t question your “accuracy”.
With only a few days before I leave for Mumbai, I’m busily preparing for a productive month. Among other things I hope to accomplish, there’s going to be a lot of drawing going on! I’m looking forward to spending some time on the waterfront and in the oldest remnants of the last remaining villages in the city.
One conundrum: how much of my studio goes with me? I can definitely get all the supplies I need in India, but do I want to spend weeks running around rounding things up that I’ve already got here? Or do I want to drag a whole lot of material halfway around the world?
I guess it will be a mix. Today I’m gessoing panels and wrapping them for easy transport.
