#Cliff McLucas | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

deepmappingdumfries · 6 years ago

Text

Introduction to Deep Mapping Dumfries

"... the deep map attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual; the conflation of oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, natural history and everything you might ever want to say about a place …"

Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology (Routledge 2001) p. 64-65

The Deep Map

Maps can be useful, interesting, often beautiful. But any map can only ever portray a particular aspect of a place – and because they are always partial, maps are inherently biased and therefore political.

This is an experiment. An attempt to make a ‘deep map’ of Dumfries - an interdisciplinary, multi-layered, multimedia portrait of the town, from a ‘centre’ that is Oxfam Books and Music Dumfries, where I’m based as writer in residence. The eventual product will depend on how much and what kind of response I get from others. I will work on the deep map using as many other perspectives as I can and the more other voices I’m able to include, the richer the map could be – so how the map ends up shaped depends partly on you!

Are you someone who has known Dumfries your whole life? Or someone who moved here recently? Do you, like me, live outside Dumfries, but know it as the main town? Maybe you’ve only ever visited but have some particular important memory associated with it. Or do you have some expert knowledge – perhaps historical, archaeological, botanical, zoological, even mythological? Each will have quite a different perspective of the same particular places. If we could gather many of these, what could we build?

Throughout the project, I’ll be providing prompts – perhaps photos of particular places, or interesting facts about them or poems on particular themes, hoping to get people’s memories and connections to particular places reawakened. I’ll also be running some place writing workshops to help get folks’ writerly juices flowing! And I’ll be attempting a ‘Poetry Map of Dumfries’, similar to the Stanza ‘Poetry Map of Scotland.’

The project is somewhat fluid, and will be further shaped as it carries on – look out for further developments on how to get involved, here and on the Oxfam Dumfries Facebook page.

Why Dumfries?

I studied in Dumfries as a mature student, at the University of Glasgow’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies. I graduated in 2017 with an MLitt in Environment, Culture and Communication. On this taught degree, amongst other things, I learned much about how previous writers have written about place, about being in particular place and what that means for being a human and trying to live well. I also began developing a creative practice which attempts to incorporate my skills as a writer, artist and researcher, to portray particular place in a profoundly layered and multiple way - just as our experience of the world is always profoundly layered and multiple.

At the same time, I had begun to work on my own issues with anxiety and poor self-confidence by learning and practicing mindfulness meditation. This mainly consists of learning to notice – to notice what your mind is thinking and what your body is feeling, learning how to try to be really present in the world, rather than always absorbed in thoughts about the past or worries about the future, fears about how others see you. These things never fully go away, but almost like magic, the practice of noticing them (or trying to notice them as often as possible) without judgement takes away massive amounts of how damaging they are and helps you make a start at feeling at home in yourself. I didn’t believe it could happen until it did.

This practice of noticing, or remembering to keep trying to notice, also helped me to see how much our experience of the world is always filtered by what we know, or think we know. Our experience of place can be hugely affected by what we know about it and by what emotions and memories we connect with it.

My family moved to Dumfries and Galloway when I was 4. When I was a wee girl, Dumfries was the big town we’d get the bus to once a week, where my mum would get her fruit and veg at the market, where the swimming pool was and all the shops and shoppers in the High Street, the vennel – and where the fair would land twice a year, the wonderful, terrifying, sickening, money-draining fair. As a teenager Dumfries was a Saturday hang out, later a pub venue (though the lack of night buses meant this was a rare affair). It was where I went to college, later university, where I had both babies, where hospital visits good and bad take place. Now, it’s where I volunteer at Oxfam Books and Music, trying to be of some use to the world, finding I maybe can be. So even just to me, Dumfries is not a single place; it’s all of this and much more. Add in the memories and experiences of all the others connected to Dumfries and what a rich and complex picture you’d have.

But Dumfries is also all the things that ever happened to make it what it is now – how the rocks were formed that it’s built on and of, how the soil was formed, how the river flows and why, how the climate is and has been. What plants grow here, and what other creatures we share it with. Which powerful and legendary people made which things happen. And all of this is interconnected.

In recent years, all the towns I know have changed; shops have closed and charity shops, e-cig outlets and bookies are dotted about between boarded up premises. Many of us still want to visit towns but it feels as though we don’t quite know what they’re for any more. Dumfries is in the midst of finding out who it wants to be, what it can be. Many incredibly positive, innovative and community-based placemaking projects are ongoing – including, but not limited to: The Stove Network, the Midsteeple Quarter), Incredible Edible, MOOL (Massive Outpouring of Love) and of course Oxfam Books and Music Dumfries’s various projects, including the current ‘Art Beats Poverty’ summer programme. In order to add to this, I’m going to do what I can to try to build up a portrait of who Dumfries is and has been. I hope that this can be ongoing and include the voices and perspectives of as many folk as possible.

Cliff McLucas - "There are ten things that I can say about these deep maps.

First. Deep maps will be big – the issue of resolution and detail is addressed by size.

Second. Deep maps will be slow – they will naturally move at a speed of landform or weather.

Third. Deep maps will be sumptuous – they will embrace a range of different media or registers in a sophisticated and multilayered orchestration.

Fourth. Deep maps will only be achieved by the articulation of a variety of media – they will be genuinely multimedia, not as an aesthetic gesture or affectation, but as a practical necessity.

Fifth. Deep maps will have at least three basic elements – a graphic work (large, horizontal or vertical), a time-based media component (film, video, performance), and a database or archival system that remains open and unfinished.

Sixth. Deep maps will require the engagement of both the insider and outsider.

Seventh. Deep maps will bring together the amateur and the professional, the artist and the scientist, the official and the unofficial, the national and the local.

Eighth. Deep maps might only be possible and perhaps imaginable now – the digital processes at the heart of most modern media practices are allowing, for the first time, the easy combination of different orders of material – a new creative space.

Ninth. Deep maps will not seek the authority and objectivity of conventional cartography. They will be politicized, passionate, and partisan. They will involve negotiation and contestation over who and what is represented and how. They will give rise to debate about the documentation and portrayal of people and places.

Tenth. Deep maps will be unstable, fragile and temporary. They will be a conversation and not a statement."

http://cliffordmclucas.info/deep-mapping.html

Deep Mapping Dumfries on Wordpress here.

#dumfries #writing #scotland #psychogeography #deep mapping #placemaking #poetry #prose #photography #art #community

3 notes · View notes