EXHIBITIONS:
Open for view every Thurs 2-8pm, Fri 3-7pm and Sat 2-6pm and occasional other nights.
See ‘What's New' page for 'here' and 'A Hackney Squatting Mapping'
THE MAP ROOM (is open...) Exhibition
The Map Room (is open...) is a loose collection of radical + alt. maps and walks including hand-drawn maps, imagined or utopian maps, political charts, flowcharts and diagrams, altered maps, radical history maps, radical history walking guides etc. Collected from all over the known mapped world and beyond, we are always seeking submissons to our map open-access archive. It functions to build a collection of different guides to towns, cities and treasure islands that can be taken away for free by travellers. Not every map is as useful as a topological map but you might have some interesting adventures and meetings from some of our maps.
So far we have some 30 hand-done maps/walks from Richmond, Virginia via The Science Museum in London to Rovereto, Trento. The 'Festival of Mapping' is a continuation of the The Map Room seeking to substantially build up this collection. There are no heavy guidelines to what we collect - eg. we have a scrappy bit of paper detailing the walk in Pensacola, Florida from a house to the beer dumpster but we also have a professionally produced Women's History map from Copenhagen, Denmark. Photocopies are fine. Come see the Exhibition and bring down your map efforts and add them to the Archive.
HAPPENING HISTORIES
Happening Histories is a CD-ROM. Its a large interactive documentary that merges the past, present and possible futures of the Grosvenor Estate in Camberwell. Local folks brought images and sound recordings about their impressions of where they lived, to document their tales of the area and to share memories, photographs, thoughts and feelings about The Grosvenor. The CD-Rom will be accessible throughout the Map Festival
SANTIAGO + WALWORTH: International Dis/Appearance
The process of erasure and closure is at work in both Santiago, Chile and Walworth in London (and everywhere else too it seems?) Decay, psychic anchors, historical ruins and the sense of community life in local space is demolished overnight. What buildings, grafitti, secrets, shops, dark alleys keep life in your neighbourhood bearable? What happens when these happy references are removed form the landscape? As if by magic, without reference to you, to what is or what has been, towers of 'luxury' flats spring up overnight. The only reference is money. When money arrives, you depart. This dual photographic exhibition documents a personal take on scrubbing the city clean, against the myths and hypes of regeneration and gentrification.
RADICAL LONDON CHART
Come down to our mega-mapping of London's radical activist scenes and draw in your own political or poetic trajectories. We got a big piece of white and we want you to darken it by filling it in, amending it, correcting it and to start fresh genealogies. What links and chains can you plot on our Radical London Chart? What connects you to us, to other strands, to the future, to the past? Like this? Mai68>LWG>ACF>RTS>J18>G8? LSU>ASS>SNOW>BSA>56ª>FofM?
Blimey! Acronym city! What lies behind the above collection of abbreviated histories. Even if you cant add anythihg, you'll come away knowing your DAM's from your ALFSG's. So, we'll start it, you takeover. Come down and expand this conspiracy! We hope to continue this project in various printed versions. If you wanna be inspired, then check out our chart 'History of the Italian Left 1968-1977'
PRECARI-PUNX POSTER PROJECT
Calling all the young punks slaving their sore arses in precarious jobs, your backs acheing, your minds are numbed. How come all these punks are doing the shitwork but never seem to comment on the role and nature of precarious punks at work. If you can be arsed, come by and fill in our Precari-PunX poster with your crappy work situation and how it affects your mind and body. You don't have to be a punk rocker to fill one in neither. Curated by 'How We Live', the Precari-Punx exhibition / research process is small part of an intended but as yet unformed collective action against social insecurity, for a refusal of work. Like getting back to basics!