Cartographies of the Imagination; Talking, Drawing, Performing Places

The act of cartography implies a projection of ownership, power, fixation and control. Yet the world we live in is full of ambiguity, subjectivity, collaboration, imagination and change. Can the embrace of more ambiguous drawing methods uncover new ways of seeing, imagining and rebuilding the world around us? In 2021, the Cartographies of the Imagination project held a month-long festival of drawing, exploring the space between place and imagination, truth and myth, the tangible and the ephemeral. Set in Omved Gardens in Highgate, a programme of talks, film screenings, experimental dinners, conversations and workshops was staged within an exhibition. The exhibition expanded and reconfigured throughout the month, exhibiting the processes and pieces as they emerged. The varying event-forms created a new and open testing ground for research-through-embodiment, and a platform for interdisciplinary crossovers between practitioners and the public. In this piece, we wish to explore the potential of embodied practice through the multi-faceted frame format of a festival and, in particular, to discuss a two-day collaborative drawing workshop run for students of art, architecture, landscape and design on 17–18 July 2021. The workshop sought to break down ideas of singular ownership, control and pre-determination, and to develop an experimental and non-hierarchical cartographic practice. Over 15 hours, students from various courses, cities and countries worked together in groups of five on one drawing. Sited between the real and the imaginary, they were asked to transpose two places—the gardens around us, against a selection of original works from the Drawing Matter archive. Through drawn and verbal negotiations, compromises, notations and big bodily gestures, three new worlds took shape. Through a dissemination of the three drawings, and the unplanned choreography that led to them, this piece looks to explore drawing new methods as a collaborative practice of embodied discovery.