Mapping Meaning brings together artists, scientists and scholars to explore new modes of acting in the face of social and ecological crises. Inspired by a photograph from 1918 depicting an all-female survey crew, Mapping Meaning supports the creative work and scholarship of those working at edges and ecotones, who are pushing against traditional disciplinary boundaries. Since 2010 this multi-generational collective has been gathering together around experimental knowledge practices.
The project is rooted in five-day experimental workshops that take place biennially at biological field stations in the USAmerican West. Selected women come from across the Americas representing a wide diversity of perspectives and disciplines including: visual art, geology, American Indian Studies, entomology, film, ecology, architecture, American Studies, dance, creative writing, visual anthropology, geography, GIS–land surveying, ethnobotany, permaculture, business, civil & environmental engineering, and folklore.
In a deeply fragmented and disciplined-based world, Mapping Meaning creates a space to encounter divergent approaches toward ‘surveying’ human, ecological and technological landscapes, and ardently resists oversimplification. Through workshops, exhibitions, and transdisciplinary research, Mapping Meaning promotes a radical reconsideration of the role humanity plays in a more-than-human world.
They also create the Mapping Meaning Journal, an interdisciplinary journal published twice a year offering a collective space to imagine, create and propose models that help us understand our physical, social and spiritual worlds.
COUNTERSPACE 