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DESK at CONFLUX 2006:
Two London members of 'YOU ARE HERE BUT WHY?' (Free Festival of Mapping) will arrive in Brooklyn as complete strangers to place. Their heads will only be full of imagined histories, myths and cultural image sof the places. The DESK project will begin. No actual project materials will be brought with them. (For us) the DESK project has an initial two-fold purpose:(1) Intended as both a field research project and a game, we will begin to construct over the four days of the Fesitval one adult-size study desk on the streets of Brooklyn in different random locations enlisting the help or derision, fascination or disinterest of those we meet in the street as we progress. We will make the desk using scrounged, borrowed, asked for, collected, recycled wood and tools that we find as we explore the streets of Brooklyn. (A street map may be consulted by the participants for intuitive clues, resonances or associations to help us collect materials but not necessarily).
We will encourage Conflux attendees to become part of this daily project as we will encourage anyone we meet in passing to lend a hand. With this is mind we will leave a contact point for the days initial meeting place as well as a way of finding out where we are at any given moment. We will be happy to work with anyone on this collective project for five minutes, half an hour, an afternoon, a day etc. We intend the building of DESK to also be enjoyed as a game rather than as a strict construction project. Whatever happens happens!
We then hope to continue this social theme by eating out, eating in, drinking and chatting and hanging out though the possible formation of a spontaneous mini-community of local people and Conflux fellow travellers after the days work of DESK has been completed.
(2) As the DESK is being constructed we will begin what could be academically described as 'fieldwork' or 'research' but that we like to think of as an uncovering or process of collective self-mapping: This is what we have previously written on our ideas around self-mapping:
"We are not expert map-makers nor experts in history or geography but this does not limit the creation and potential of our maps. We do not seek to make art objects but rather to create beauty in life. The beauty comes in a recognising our common ground. This is the sense of our practice of radical cartography.
Already you can see that this kind of 'mapping' does not always mean the physical production of objects but includes conversation, emotions, discovery or simply walking with friends and strangers. We map what we see and feel and what we desire for our world because the power over us tries it's hardest to falsify whatever passes before our eyes. Through this practice, through Festival, through participation, we have created by self-mapping something closer to our terrain, our histories, our subjectivity and the possibility that the world can be turned upside down. By self-mapping we mean a process of making connections creatively between the individual's own life experience and the reasons how and why they come to be in any one place at any one time. Self-mapping tells and shares our stories. We called our Festival ‘You Are Here But Why?' to reflect but to also act on the wider questions that maps and mapping bring up. What is a map but an attempt to describe a reality? More often than not the map is a wholly inadequate representation of our realities, mediated by the prevailing morals and conventions from a society that we oppose. A map functions like lined paper for writing on. Its form defines a rigid way, or 'truth’. It excludes more than it includes. We propose to self-map like writing the wrong way on lined paper. The question 'You Are Here But Why? is of course a loaded one. How did any one person get to stand in the 56a Infoshop one day in June 2005? It seemed a beautiful starting point to think about all the reasons why we are here at this point in time and space. It is also fairly impossible to remember or imagine all of those reasons but in that process we make connections between our personal history, good and bad, and the outside influences that make up the answer to why we are here now.'
The DESK as it is constructed will also begin to play it’s part as a place for the uncovering the secrets why those who pass by and ask a question, those who lend a tool, those who are curious, those who are self-defined as one thing or another, those who are hostile, those in exile, those who find something pleasing in coming across DESK quite spontaneously are here, now. We do not propose a fully realised documentation of this project as the joy and possibilities are found in the creation of the moment and not in the task of collecting archival material. The material is in the act itself. However we will have pens and lined paper available in the desk for spontaneous writing, the creation of one map of Desk, Brooklyn locations, creation of lists, collection of contacts, or whatever any participant desires to put down on paper seated at a study desk in the streets of Brooklyn. We also know that the DESK project will be subject to change and diversion by taking it out into the streets and we are happy for this to be the case.
Through the collusion of making the DESK and self-mapping we will also hope to explore the possibility of the transference of bodies of local knowledge from one well known and explored environment (South London) to another completely unknown locality (Brooklyn). We know that we could do this project in our local streets and, despite chance and risk, we know some of the likelihood of how the project would go materially and socially. We are excited by the prospect of seeing how our own local street knowledge transfers from one city to another never before visited one. Will the DESK be built? Will we form random associations and spontaneous community that happily crossover? Will we self-map our own experience of four days in Brooklyn alongside the histories, tales, skills, dreams of local people? What an adventure!
WHO?
'YOU ARE HERE BUT WHY?' (A Free Festival of Mapping) is a more or less adhoc group of researchers, radical historians, creative folk, 'anarcho-types', alternative mappers, lapsed psycho-geographers etc. The loose collective found each other during the establishment and events of the 'YOU ARE HERE BUTWHY?' Free Festival of Mapping held in and around 56aInfoshop Social Centre, South London in June 2005.This is a fantastically long running ex-squatted meeting place of minds and bits of paper that many of us have spent years of our lives running and keeping going. The Festival itself event lasted a whole month in which time new maps were made, games were devised, walks were had and a whole lot of talking took place. Collaborations continue to this day. Without any formal collective set-up or strict intentions, 'YOUARE HERE BUT WHY?' A Free Festival of Mapping allows individuals and clusters of folks to make events as and when they please. Individual and collective plans for 2006 include participation with the Argentinean artist network TRAMA on the project of 1:1 Mapping; mutual aid and lending of our Map Archive to a Map Festival in Trento, Italy in October; continuation of our Radical History walks, our next adventure to find the grave of the great 17th Century Ranter Abeiizer Coppe in Putney by the River Thames; other advance parties will work out mapping plans for the random chosen town Truro in Devon, England as well as projects based on the words 'Treasure Trove' and 'Truth'. Such an unexpected explosion of projects and possibilities stemming from one single act of putting on a Map Festival has been incredibly exciting for all of us. We run all of these endeavors on a shoestring with the greatest desire to work with autonomous or forward thinking groups and institutions. With this is mind, coming to CONFLUX2006 to play and participate would be great for us.You can find out more on the above mentioned spaces, festivals and projects here:
56a Infoshop: www.56a.org.uk
Map Festival: www.56a.org.uk/maproom.html
Projects: www.56a.org.uk/mapnew.html
Map Room: www.56a.org.uk/maproomopen.html
Map Festival Participants for CONFLUX 2006 proposal: