Décalez!, Marseille, France July 2018

An emergent public engagement project loosely based on a very short story by Jorges Luis Borges ‘On Exactitude in Science’  *

A fragile/mutable/theatrical rig of pulleys and guy wires and strips of fabric define the space and opens the third wall to the street. Gossamer ladders made of shredded plastic blow in the wind and a blank black globe sits high on a pedestal. Passers by helped create linear maps and help distort them with torque and tension, rag garments were reconstructed, and stories written. A participatory exploration into the shifting migration of self and place.  Personal stories were contributed and written by passers by on discarded tarps and the general public helped mend rag garments.

Dos Mares, storefront project space, Cour Jullien, Marseille, France

*On Exactitude in Science by Jorges Lus Borges,  translated by Andrew Hurley
…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a
single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety
of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the
Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and
which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so
fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map
was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the
Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are
Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is
no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
—Suarez Miranda,Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658