Symposium and workshops on experimental and sensorial mapping practices in the context of Social Science Research: Programme

• Share and discuss concepts, approaches, research fields, and ongoing questions during presentations and roundtable discussions;

• Explore a variety of practices during workshops, where participants will experiment with creating their own sensorial and emotional maps, using tools that blend scientific and artistic approaches.

• Short presentations, during which participants will share methods and ideas, and describe the different aspects of their participatory or creative mapping practices. We place great emphasis on keeping presentations short (15 to 20 minutes maximum) to allow time, on the one hand, for dialogue and exchange, and on the other, for us to take the necessary time to run the workshops, draw, and create;

• Hands-on workshops of 2 to 3 hours, during which we will create sensory maps and illustrations based on data and information collected in the space around the place where we gather, or by exploring our memory;

• Collective discussions around key themes and questions related to the definition and practice of this sensory, emotional mapping, and reflections on the relevance of such practices for the humanities, and perhaps for understanding the world and space in a different way.

• Drawing material: We will provide drawing materials: lots of colours, oil pastels, pencils, and gouache, everything you need to create, draw, paste, and cut. But you are also welcome to bring your own drawing supplies, your pencils or pastels, the ones you prefer to use!

• One or two publications: eventually, over the past few years of organizing these workshops, we have established a tradition: we ask participants to bring one or two publications on cartography,— books, atlases or journal that deal with maps — to help create what we call a “temporary (or ephemeral) library” (since it lasts only two and a half days). The books will be displayed on a table in the room so that everyone can consult and browse through them, and discuss about them. Don’t forget to write your name and email address on the inside page!

• The militant manual by Cian Dayrit: Cian Dayrit is an artist from the Philippines who, unfortunately, will not be able to attend in person, but has agreed to give a presentation via videoconference to talk about his experiences with activist workshops (Militant Mapping, in which cognitive mapping prompts are used to explore and address inequality, conflict, and resistance).

Cian Dayrit asks that you download his “activist manual”

• You may consult beforehand the « Embodied Ecologies training series », short videos presenting the project “Embodied Ecologies” and giving a context in “sensory mapping” and “cartographic semiology”:

• 09:00 – Welcome, coffee and cake

• 09:15–10:00 – Opening by Anita Hardon & Philippe Rekacewicz

▸ Introduction
▸ Mapping in the context of Embodied Ecologies
▸ Presentation and framework of the workshop
▸ Sensorial mapping: a bit of context and a bit of semiology

• 10:10 – 12:15 : Workshop 1:

▸ Florence Troin & Philippe Rekacewicz - Embodied sensory walk with the deprivation of one sense

• 12:15 – 13 :00 – Lecture (Speaker’s Corner)

▸ Denice Salvacion: Creative and collaborative mapping practices with communities in the Philippines (in particular in the Cordillera in the North): representing imaginaries, making complex social interactions visible:

▸ Precious Angelica Echague: Mapping blurred spaces in Marikina, Manilla (Philippines):

• 13:00 – 14:00 – Lunch

• 14 :00 – 14 :30 – Lecture (Speaker’s Corner)

▸ Josh Snow & Kevin Lai: Mapping soil care infrastructures in Amsterdam.

• 14:30 – 16:30 : Parallel workshops

▸ Workshop 2a: Severin Halder & Paul Schweizer: Integrating audio in maps. A method to make oral and other audible sources hearable within our analogue maps, in order to give voice to those layers of meaning that elude visualization.

▸ Workshop 2b: Aniara Rodado & Mariana Rios Sandoval: creating a collective map through drawing, focusing on bodily perceptions. Movement, gesture, and touch guide the exploration of space, memory, and imagination.

• 16:45 – 17:30 – Lecture (Speaker’s Corner)

▸ Katharina Wahedi: Haiǀǀom engagement with land and the environment: Sensorial mapping at Tsintsabis resettlement farm, Namibia

▸ Afroditi Avgerou: Commoning toxic space: uneven exposure, embodiment and collective action in the peripheries of Paris.

• 9:00 – 10:00 – Lecture (Speaker’s Corner)

▸ Cian Dayrit: Talk on videoconference from Manilla: Militant Mapping in workshops where are activated cognitive mapping prompts to unpack and address inequality, conflict and resistance. You can download the zine/manual Militant Mapping.

▸ Alexis Grussi-Séné, Alice Durot, Jakob Hottner (at large), Mariana Rios Sandoval: Between Recollection and Sensorial Exploration: Contamination, Mobilizations, and Narratives in the industrial town of Fos-sur-Mer (France)

• 10:00 – 10:20 : Short Break

• 10:20 – 12:30 : Workshop 3 part 1:

▸ This workshop session will be split in two moments: A first set of 2h10, and after lunch and a presentation by Yamina, as in the afternoon of second set of 1h10, which will make 3h30 altogether.

▸ We propose to double the Monday’s workshop and offer the participants the opportunity do attend one or the other of the workshop the would have missed the day before.

▸ The session starts with a communication by Florence Troin who will tell about Three years of Sensory and experimental mapping in Mayotte (a French island beside Madagascar in the Indian ocean), with Children and teenagers. A short film will be shown at this occasion.

▸ Choice of workshops between:

1) Drawing your “identity map” or “the map that tells something about yourself” (TMTTSAY) with Philippe Rekacewicz & Florence Troin.

2) Integrating audio in maps. A method to make oral and other audible sources hearable within analogue maps, to give voice to those layers of meaning that elude visualization with Severin Halder & Paul Schweizer.

3) creating a collective map through drawing, focusing on bodily perceptions. Movement, gesture, and touch guide the exploration of space, memory, and imagination with Aniara Rodado & Mariana Rios Sandoval.

• 12:30 – 13:30 – Lunch

• 13:30 – 14:30 : Workshop 3 part 2:

▸ Presentation: Yamina Sam: Asmekhthey, or the ritual of remembrance: an appropriation of colonial maps by the Kabylian (Algeria) diaspora in Switzerland: Continuation and completion of the morning workshops, and collective debriefing

• 14:30 – 16:00 (Speaker’s Corner)

▸ Emma van Dalen: How can we map the “hygge” in Denmark, in other word the gathering with friend an family who “just want to be well and enjoy friendship by being together”.

▸ Andrea Pla i Rivas: Mapping Otherwise: A Manifesto in Crayons and Colour Pencils.

▸ Magdaleine Maire: “Breathing spaces” in Marseille: spatializing desires against urban capitalism.

• 16:00–16:30 : Break

• 16:30 – 17:30/18:00 – Discussion 1 with the whole group (NcountR):

▸ This discussion and collective exchange is a moment in which we would like to invite you to reflect on a variety of aspects of experimental cartography practice (definition, epistemology, relevance for the humanities, outcomes), but also to share your own experiences as practitioners—whether in the field with informants, for example, or in class with students.

▸ It will take place in two sessions: one on Tuesday evening, and the second on Wednesday morning as a conclusion to our gathering. This means that the topics we do not have time to address on Tuesday can be taken up on Wednesday!

▸ Experimental mapping: a young discipline in search of its identity: what we generically refer to as ‘experimental cartography’ and which we all practise in a wide variety of forms is also found under a wide variety of names: radical, critical, sensorial, sensory, emotional, participative, creative, collective… ?

▸ We also often meet the expression “counter-cartography”, today challenged by the community of critical cartographers. What, then, would be the most appropriate ways to name the discipline we practise?

▸ What do you think we are really doing? How do we define ourselves and what motivates us to choose to practise an ‘unconventional’ mapping, as an alternative to traditional practices?

▸ How do we implement this “other way” to map the world”? How relevant is it for research in the social and human sciences to illustrate and map the data and information we gather from our (or others) experiences of space, landscape, and territory, as well as from our memories throughout our personal history and experience (or others)?"

▸ These collective discussion sessions will also provide an opportunity for participants to share specific mapping experiences they may not have had enough time to present during their (short) communication. They will also be a space to bring forward questions they are, (for instance), currently struggling with, and to propose them to the collective.

• 09:00–10:30 – Lecture (Speaker’s Corner)

▸ Camila Narbaitz Sarsur: Citizen knowledge and official data, where contradictions emerge

▸ David Bautista Perez: From the flow of the Magdalena River, Mexico City, Mexico: An approach to socio-environmental challenges through participatory mapping.

▸ Miha Turcik: Planetary Public Stack, flattened Worlds, Multiplying Perspectives: Critical Planetary Imaginaries:

10:30–10:45 - Short Break

• 10:40–12:40/13:00 – Discussion 2 with the whole group (NcountR):

▸ Concluding remarks: As we wrap up, let’s take a moment for debriefing and feedback from our workshops: have we learned something new? By reflecting on our experiences with sensory mapping as one of the methods employed in social science research, we may ask whether this approach can be regarded as a genuine producer of knowledge, comparable to other established tools and techniques in the human sciences.

▸ It is allowed to draw during this collective sessions!

• 12:40/13:00 – 14:00 – Festive lunch and end !