Mapping Collected Memory (2009–2010)
In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit describes the sensation of getting lost as a “voluptuous surrender . . . with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography” (6).
Mapping Collected Memory is an Amman-based project that records the city through residents’ narratives and methods of navigation. The project is an investigation of markers and landmarks in a city that recently implemented street numbers and names. Though this new system moves toward formal addresses, the main form of navigation in Amman is a memory-based system reliant on visual aids.
Through informal, guided city tours and hand drawn maps, I encountered the city through the memorization of its districts, streets, and shortcuts.
The images from Mapping Collected Memory address the experience of getting lost and urban fragmentation attributed to the navigation of a new city.
Mapping Collected Memory is an Amman-based project that records the city through residents’ narratives and methods of navigation. The project is an investigation of markers and landmarks in a city that recently implemented street numbers and names. Though this new system moves toward formal addresses, the main form of navigation in Amman is a memory-based system reliant on visual aids.
Through informal, guided city tours and hand drawn maps, I encountered the city through the memorization of its districts, streets, and shortcuts.
The images from Mapping Collected Memory address the experience of getting lost and urban fragmentation attributed to the navigation of a new city.
