peoples map.

This last week, I have been thinking that there must have been a reason those names are placed together in particular pages. I believe this should be somehow narrated, but certainly without voiceover, in a video piece, an integral part of the installation.

This is how the story would go for this small part:

Before the names got on those pages, they were actually spread out in a peoples map. This map is a big piece of paper that shows the specks of blood and the names next to (or above, or below) them. Mind you, without the context/presence of the mosquitoes, these specks would only be random reddish-brown specks and would just look like a collection of hundreds of tiny reddish-brown islands on a big piece of paper.

So from a distance this looks like an old hand-drawn hand-written map, and there are several lines that remind us of geography. But are they actually geographic lines?

Let’s see.

I also think I need video pieces with – purely – the mosquitoes, as well as on the making of the passport covers. Then, another piece where all of them are stringed together in an almost-logical narrative sequence, somehow telling the history (time-based media is perfect for this) of how they all came together.

I’m also thinking of building a website in which these names are listed – perhaps linked out as well – with short bios of the people behind the names. And perhaps how they are related to each other. These relationships should be the lines that connect them in the map – the lines that look like geographic lines.

Back to the peoples map: it only looks like a geographic map because it is using this particular visual language – that of a geographic map. There is no connection whatsoever, however, between (Re)Collection of Togetherness’ peoples map to any geographic map.

Is that, however, denying the realistic presence of the physical? Do I want that?

Anyway. Just sharing the storm in my mind. Cleaning up more mosquito pictures right now. Also folding papers while awaiting more passport cover scans to come. Thinking of how to get more names, and thinking of somehow doing something with, or like http://projecthello.org – as one of the many parts of the names-scouting process.