Provocation 3:
Linda Knight
Linda Knight
Provocation 3: Inefficient Mapping
Isabelle Stengers describes cosmopolitics as the intention “to slow down the construction of this common world, to create a space for hesitation regarding what it means to say ‘good’ ...[Cosmopolitics] does not lead to answers everyone should finally accept” (2005, pp. 995-996).
How are you being-in the pandemic?
How is your being-in the pandemic a particular situation and situating?
And how does that particularity of situation/situating create a cosmopolitics of a pandemic that is complex and different for everyone?
This provocation asks you to watch this video, and then to inefficiently map your situation and situating of being-in the pandemic. The collection will offer a cartography of the pandemic through its disruptions and continual challenges.
Stengers, I. (2005) The cosmopolitical proposal. In B. Latour & P. Weibel (Eds.), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
BIO:
Linda Knight is an artist and academic who specialises in critical and speculative arts practices and methods. Linda devised ‘Inefficient Mapping’ as a methodological protocol for conducting fieldwork in projects informed by ‘post-‘ theories. In her role as Associate Professor at RMIT University, Australia Linda creates transdisciplinary projects across early childhood, creative practice, and digital media. Together with Jacina Leong, Linda is a founding member of the Guerrilla Knowledge Unit, an artist collective that curates interface jamming performances between the public and AI technologies.
Linda has exhibited digitally and physically in Australia, UK, USA, Canada, NZ, and South America and has been awarded arts research grants and prizes with international reach and impact, most recently this includes an Australian Research Council Discovery project that designs novel technologies for framing and enabling young children’s active play.
Responses:
Aidan B.
Eye of The Storm: an Observation of Movement from Isolation
I chose to base my project off the work of Linda Knight,and create inefficient maps of the places I’ve spent a significant amount of time in over the course of the pandemic. After finishing the sporadic sketches and observing the lot of them layered over each other, I noticed that even in crisis, with social distancing and the litany of other COVID restrictions, there is still an incredible amount of movement and interaction in the spaces around us. When I was outside (distanced by myself of course) or at home with my family, activity was more obvious. I marked any person I saw where I saw them, and even drew out sounds from people whether it be talking or footsteps along the ground. However even when I was by myself in either of the bedrooms I’ve been switching between since August, there was so much to take in that I’d never thought to acknowledge before. I found myself visualizing and drawing the relationships between light and shadow, drawing the glow of my computer, and even the sounds I heard from my various appliances or from right outside the door.
Gabriel S.
Leah S.
The pandemic has affected me and my living situation in many different ways over the past year. I’ve had to move three times from one home to another, and now my home is a sacred place that I take sanctuary in. I’ve become accustomed to being at home nearly all the time and I try to make the best of it. Using a charcoal pencil, I decided to map out my small apartment, as I go through each room: coming through the front door, going into the kitchen,visiting the restroom, and finally settling into my bedroom. This represents how far I’ve come toget here and how special it is to have a place to call my own. I made three maps, changing up the steps as they happen in my daily routine, and I will layer them over each other.
Chloe J.
Julien P.
I knew almost as soon as I saw it that I wanted to respond to this provocation, but I did a littlemore research just to be sure.I went to Linda Kight’s website to find more informationand then looked further into google. Ifound a video where she explains her process and themeaning behind the inefficient mapshowcased on the pluralversity website.From that video I got a pretty good idea of how togo about creating an inefficient map.Then I pulled out a pen and some paper, closed myeyes and began to walk through thepandemic.I went through everything I remember, every feelingand day, and when I saw edges in theimages of my mind. I drew. My hand and mind’s eyeworked as one to create a map of the lastyear!Also I realized later that there was a linked video(somewhat hidden) on the site but I had foundthe same video by luck so it’s okay!
Alyana Jauregui
I decided to map out how my feelings/emotions progressively got worse throughout the pandemic as either more or less events started to happen, each flower represents either a day or even a week depending on many marks are mapped out on the flower as well as representing how the deep the events affects myself as a human being.
Sadie Garcia-Blanks
Mapping the Mind: the tangible edges of anxiety and joy
Jean Howard
“Missing Reminders And Replacing Trails”
This Pandemic has tried everyone but I really felt it all come to a boil for me when my good friend from high school disappeared in 2021. I was already wearing thin from the deaths of the virus growing each day but when Khay disappeared I slowly began to fall from my window of tolerance. Everything became agitating. First it was the false information circulating online. Questions of Khay’s morality came into question, blurring help and lonely strangers’ theories together making it impossible to stay updated without becoming enraged by the thoughtless ness of commenters. I did a bit of digging recently on it and found that not only were his missing poster being taken down by unknown parties but the SARS search was severely ill managed. This has left his loved ones turning to the internet. I’ve seen some blogs talk on the strangeness of it all. But what bothered me the most in my search was the review section for the trail my buddy took that day, Weavers Needle. The most recent comment aside from the ones from Khay’s family begging to keep the posters up and to stay vigilant for any signs of him was a comment saying “Beautiful trail, not marked well at all.”
It all feels like too much to look at, the trail people are assuming he took before he vanished, the missing signs of a photo he’d hate to have shared around as much as it has, and images of the landscape that surrounded him that day.
This visual is the chaos surrounding the case, the loss his loved ones feel as we get closer to a year of now new information. This map is the ambiguous loss.
Adnan T.
My pandemic experience is not regular and linear. I divided six main terms of my experience. In the beginning, everything was normal to me. I believe that it is a “temporary” situation. After I lost my friends, family members, and relatives, the reality of the pandemic has changed for me. My travel plans, field research, and educational activities were suspended. My life was changed without my will. Pandemic was not only a type of health problem for me; it was a type of secret power. The lines represent my feelings, not how the pandemic changed my life. I noted the important days that have happened since March 2020. I started to draw, and I changed lines based on my feelings on each date. It is a map, but at a point, it looks like the EKG of my heart, and each change represents a heart attack in my pandemic experience.
Harrison M.
I want to showcase my timeline through, over a year now, how the pandemic has gone for me. My life has felt a little fuzzy since the start, so I wanted to use a background that reflected this. Using digital art, my mouse, and a blind eye I traced out from start to new beginning, where my life has gone. I have not personally experienced the loss of a loved one, I’m greatly thankful for this. Though, it was a time of rapid change for me. My job had me bouncing all over the city. I was locked down with my roommates, and made some wonderful memories. I worked through the entirety of the pandemic face to face with my neighboring people, in partial fear and uncertainty. I went through the biggest revision of my life since living away from family. A breakup that changed my life entirely. I found new work, new friends. I found a new community and family. The pandemic has been a time where I’ve been fearful, cautious, anxious, and frustrated. It has also been a time of love, understanding, rejoicing, and new journey’s. I show the highs, and lows in this picture. Closing my eyes for each movement. The colors depict moods during these different points in my emotional rollercoaster. Through the time I’ve lived in this world altering pandemic.
This was a response to Linda Knight, inefficient mapping. I was super interested in this provocation from the moment I read the first couple of instructions. Instead of reading the rest of the provocations I immediately started working on this one. This photo that was drawn was about my journey through the pandemic. I wanted to map out the emotions I was feeling on paper and so I did. I closed my eyes and begin mapping out what I felt at the beginning of the pandemic with a pencil. Those thin pencil lines were filled with confusion and eventually, I opened my eyes and saw the confusion I was first experiencing. Then I proceed with the mapping with a thick permanent marker. This was the anger and sadness I was mapping out. I had lost my grandmother during the beginning months of the pandemic and I was so saddened and angry by the loss. I began to draw my frustration of being in the pandemic during such a hard time and not getting to see other people made it even harder. My grandmother’s funeral was very small because of the high cases of COVID-19 and it was super upsetting not getting to celebrate my grandmother like she had wanted us to. The meaning of the thin pencil lines that represent my confusion can be a symbol because pencil lines are easily erased after one gains knowledge they are no longer confused. The permanent marker lines signify the depth of my loss and how it will always be permanent. The sadness and frustration that still remain to this day and how it’s something I will continue to carry for the rest of my life.
Veyda T.-B.
How am I being-in the pandemic? I am disabled. I am chronically ill. I am immunocompromised. And much of humanity and the world does not care while it spins and
spins and various strains of Covid-19 continue to circulate. My being-in the pandemic has been a stagnant waiting game, full of frustration. My particular situating has mostly been quarantined and following heavy precautions. I moved back to my parents house in the middle of a college semester and took a leave off of school on my doctor’s orders and have remained nearly as vigilant as that since March 2020. It is currently December 2021 as I write this. 629 days of waiting for the world to listen. During my situating in the beginning, I was not so angry and frustrated as I was sad and annoyed that a pandemic was going to take over my early twenties. There were mask mandates, people were talking about the creation of a vaccine, and they were listening to the truths and science and following safety protocols to protect themselves and others. There was some hope that everything would be under control within the year, and maybe even I could start participating in the world again. As time went on however, the following of safety precautions by most people declined in the face of denial and a selfish desire for normalcy. I call this selfish, but it is completely valid and understandable to crave to go back to the way things were; I do too. While it is normal to wish for this, actually being able to do so comes from a place of privilege
and it is ignorant to those around you. I personally think this should be acknowledged more because there are so many at risk- those who cannot get vaccinated, those with suppressed immune systems, the young and the elderly, and many more. Even the vaccinated can continue to spread the disease, and it is less effective or ineffective on some variants. This is why it is a problem that most vaccinated and unvaccinated people stopped wearing masks. Covid itself is perpetuated through this, and it is why we are experiencing so many variants. It is precisely why my life is still on pause, and I am fully trapped. Despite my bitterness, people themselves are not really fully to blame. They are living through a traumatic situation and coping the best they can, and the government itself (who should be modelling how to handle the situation) has removed mandates and requirements. This unsafe practice neglects marginalized peoples, (not a new occurrence in our history) and is one of the major reasons Covid is still as present and the reason
people are no longer taking it as seriously. This context lends itself to the particularity of situations that Knight mentions, the many different ways people are experiencing the pandemic. The particularity of my situation is more
severe then the majority of people in this time, but the overall situating definitely creates a specific cosmopolitics of the pandemic. It is complex and different for everyone, as is demonstrated by my story. The world literally had to slow down, shut down, and stop for a while there. Everyone was hesitant and did not know where this situation would lead. The lines between good and bad did in fact blur, and centered around an individual's experiences. This is demonstrated in my frustration at people for not wearing masks or being careful, while they believe they are fine and vaccinated. Realistically, they are fine, they are fairly protected from Covid, and my frustration comes from my own experiences, beliefs, and situations. No one is explicitly at fault or a bad person for how they are handling the pandemic, even if it is detrimental to my own wellbeing. There are no clear answers, no one predicted or has a how-to
on getting through a pandemic. The average person is doing what they have to in order to get through it and continue living their life. Not everyone can accept or find a single answer to the pandemic, it is unmapped, and not everyone accepts the different ways one may handle it. These differences are exactly what create a cosmopolitics of the pandemic. My personal bias is major in my response, although I feel it is justified, as everyone else’s actions and opinions directly impact my quality of life and literal wellbeing. To finalize the last component of the provocation, I have inefficiently mapped my situation and the situating of my being-in the pandemic. The protocols I followed included mapping my general experience first, and then some of my more personal experience. The general experience was mapped in pencil, detailing unseen challenges and physical things that
happened in the world. I decided to overlay a few maps pertaining the situation of the pandemic, and my being-in it. The cool colors were used to map the ideas I was sad about or that depressed me, while the warm colors mapped the moments and ideas I was angry, annoyed, or otherwise fired up during.
Hannah W.
The biggest roadblock that I experienced throughout the pandemic was confusion, loss, and the insecurity that came with those. The first real, hard-hitting emotion I felt during the pandemic was when I found out I wouldn’t be able to run track that year. Looking back, it was a relatively insignificant loss, but it still mattered to me in the moment. This piece attempts to show that experience and the continued losses that would follow. The first “racetrack” I attempted was messy, but at least resembled something familiar; it wasn’t perfect, but it was sufficient. The next one was drawn in red, with my eyes close. I didn’t know where my pen was, nor did I know how much I needed to move my hand to make everything the right size. The finish line, that sense of accomplishment, was also greatly skewed from where it was expected to be. I also attempted to show where the two tracks intertwined: where I had at least gotten something somewhat right. I then ran around my room, did some jumping jacks, push-ups, and burpees to get my heart rate going. And then I tried to do the same thing with a pencil. With my eyes still closed, I could not make a proper track. So, I would erase it and try again. I never really got anywhere on the racetrack. All that ever happened was the finish line kind of shifted away and I never really figured out how to do it all right. This, of course, applied to my map, my track career, and my life after the pandemic.
Bryan C.L.
The pandemic has been a little difficult in the start because it forced me adapt to this new lifestyle, where for school, I would sit in my computer, when I wanted to socialize with my friends, I would play games with them on the computer, and when I was looking for entertainment, I would still be at my computer. It was an endless cycle that I was slowly getting used to until one day I thought to myself, “is this really my life now?” After watching the video, I used paper and pencil to draw out a distorted version of me sitting at my desk, with my bed on the left and the rest of my desk on the right. This cycle of being on the computer all day and going to my bed to sleep at night made it feel as I was enclosed in this small corner.
Karenna M.
Anonymous
Anonymous
I chose the colors of the markers to represent different emotions I felt throughout the pandemic. Red represents fear. I felt it a few times throughout the pandemic, as I was afraid of getting sick. Though there aren't many lines of red on my map, the intensity of the red illustrates how strong the fear was. When I did feel fear of getting sick, it was intense. The pandemic and my anxiety did not mix well, and though it didn’t happen too often, when I did have panic attacks about getting sick, they were severe. The blue represents the times I felt depressed throughout the pandemic. It’s scattered throughout the map, which shows how I felt depressed a bit throughout the pandemic, but then there’s a point where it’s concentrated. There was a time during the pandemic where I got very depressed, and that’s as much as I would like to share about it. The black represents grief. I wish it was darker but unfortunately my marker wasn’t working well. During the pandemic I lost my grandmother. This destroyed me immensely. It had a major influence on my ability to function for months after it. I was deeply saddened and upset, I was extremely close to her. There’s just too many emotions behind it to be unpacked so I’ll just leave it at that. The greenish color represents the happiness I felt throughout the pandemic. I didn’t expect the color to come out so faintly, I had never used this marker before. But I think that it worked out well, because the moments of happiness throughout I had were small and faint, they didn’t last long. The bigger scribble of green represents when I graduated high school. I was very happy for a while, but it didn’t last long.
Matthew H.
The pandemic has been difficult for many of us, confining our day to day to a smaller world. I have felt confined to my apartment, especially when the pandemic began. In my practice of inefficient mapping, I decided to create my paths in my apartment. In the way that I walked around, pacing, from bed to desk to kitchen to couch. To anyone else, without context, my map is a bunch of scribbles. To me it shows how I have spent my time in the past two years, how limited my movement has been, yet how much movement has occurred. In this provocation I was able to visualize movement, and know that even in confined space, so much life happens. We all have faced this new difficulty, the space we once occupied has shrunk down to something smaller than our usual. Yet we’ve had to live on, allowing ourselves to shrink and fit our new space.
Jackson H.
Jackson W.
Zihui Y.
At the beginning of the epidemic, I didn't realize its severity and scope of transmission. I think it's like an ordinary epidemic. When I really realized the danger, I was forced to gap the whole semester because I couldn't return to school in the spring of 2020. China's control over the epidemic is quite strict. My family and I were asked not to go out. At first, my mood was very stable, just like in the painting, my pen was very light and almost invisible. However, as I couldn't contact the outside for a long time, I gradually became irritable and couldn't accept that I could only carry out the same activities at home every day, that is, the brush gradually became messy at home, just like my inner activities and anxiety at that time. Although I'm a fan of computer games, after that time, I didn't want to sit in front of the computer for a long time to play the games I've always loved.
Anonymous
The pandemic has greatly impacted my way of thinking and living, and I attempted to depict the struggles I had faced visibly through Knight’s inefficient map art. The most difficult time I had was adjusting to in-person school to full online. During the peak of the pandemic, I had been a newly introduced college freshman. I had built up these huge expectations and anticipation towards University life to only have all those expectations and anticipations fall short after the pandemic. And now that I’ve become accustomed to online living and working, the sudden switch back to real life has impacted me even more greatly than before. I’ve found myself more stressed, more overwhelmed, etc. It all felt like so much all at once. In my visual art, I had attempted to visibly depict all the mental alteration and intensity of the pandemic’s influence on me and my life.
Manan D.
At the start of the pandemic our company opted for most employees to work remotely. It is almost 2 years now and I have really enjoyed it. It has been great not having to rush out the door and trying to beat the daily morning traffic to the office. My two dogs Jasper and Tommy enjoy going on a 2 mile walk in the mornings before I start work. Our neighborhood has a lot of bunnies whom I really enjoy observing. Jasper wants to play with them and Tommy would love to chase them. How different the two species are. One is agile and tiny and cute and our dogs; well, they think they own the road. Many of our neighbors also walk their dogs as early as 5:30 am. I felt like I missed all this if I had to go to work in person. I enjoy listening to music while working. This opportunity to work from home has made me realize how much I love being by myself. I am less distracted and get a lot more done within my 8 hours. I have fewer calls and less interruption. In January of 2022 we will be working at the office twice a week and three days from home. Initially, I wasn’t keen on returning to the office but as the time is nearing I am looking forward to interactions with my colleagues. It will certainly be an adjustment and more so for my dogs as they got used to being around me. I could be wrong though; maybe they will also enjoy the break from me and enjoy being home alone. All in all I realize that I had taken for granted the comforts of home and family and that it can be taken away from us in the spur of the moment. I am grateful I got to experience this time at home. The Pandemic has taught me to adapt to different situations at a moment’s notice. Life can be so unpredictable that at any time anything can change and you have to be able to adjust with the change.
Julian G.
While being-in the pandemic, I can recall last year being isolated from home. This mapping expresses the chaotic thoughts that were going on around that time. While my daily routine started to deteriorate, time became non-existent and I left everything behind. Being trapped inside the house all day, trying to keep myself occupied. Although it was a dreadful feeling, it was also a learning experience of trying to adapt to this kind of situation.
Teanna O.
The pandemic has allowed me to have more creative time and space for myself and has also allowed me to make different friends with many people online across the world. As an introvert, staying inside is the best possible situation. There are times when the pandemic does make me depressed but I am doing my best to get through it like everyone else. The different colors within the scribbles and lines reflect my mood throughout the pandemic. The red, yellow and green reflect my passion and energy to get things done. The blues represent my neutral and almost apathetic feelings. The purple and black represent the mess of my mind when I had bad days of no motivation or energy.
Lorie M.
Gustavo Alegria
My pandemic situation is full of unresolved emotional traumas. Anxiety, depression, avoidance, fawning, the list goes on and on. This inefficient map is the map-like representation of all of these unresolved issues arising, all at once, in the silence of exhausted quarantine conversations. Location: tiny California backyard, Characters: First calm, endearing, avoidant partner. Second, anxious, insecure roommate. Lastly, myself Anxious, traumatized, insecure and indecisive. Plot: A large percentage of the global population, has either died, is infected or is at risk for contracting deadly virus. Us three are safely quarantining in our sun kissed backyard, enjoying the sun and unfortunately, all of our insecurities. We project, deflect and gaslight each other till word vomit and mental grandes implode our thoughts, identities and values.
Reagan S.
The pandemic had a different effect on everyone initially. My experience is unfortunately something more permanent in my life. This assignment was very emotional for me because when I closed my eyes and started free drawing as I walked around the house where my family had to quarantine, I opened my eyes and saw sadness. With the curved round edges, they weren't sharp with emotion but they were soft with sadness. My dad got sick during covid and was in the hospital for 2 weeks. His body is forever changed and now he can’t breathe the same. You can see this sadness in my drawing.
Tina T.
This pandemic has affected me mentally and physically. At the start, I thought it was going to be a temporary problem that we can all work together to fix, but this was clearly wrong; in fact, the pandemic was somehow used as a political tool to further polarize people. It shouldn’t have to be that way, and we should be able to feel comfortable to care for another without having to worry about politics, like how a mask might determine your political affiliation. However, as the pandemic turned from months into years, I found that my anxiety and loneliness had only gotten worse; thus, I decided to map out my growing anxiety, stress, and loneliness that I have had to endure from the start of the pandemic and till now.
