When the extent of the area we need to address exceeds our capacity to imagine such an experience through our body, it becomes necessary to draw a map, an outline ruled by specific landmarks.

What is globalization to each of us? How to trace a map of the world if the starting point lies at our individual experience? What is the process of translation that appears when we cancel the official discourse about globalization while trying to represent our particular vision of the world? What is the world that we do manage to represent? Can sketching nourish discourse, offering itself as an alternative text?

These are some of the questions that we intend to pose through the construction of the Atlas. Ever since February 2004, we in TRAMA have begun to collect maps of the world. We usually ask them of audiences attending events where we have been invited to participate in. Little by little, we are building a rather peculiar world atlas. In it we gather drawings made by artists and by the general public, and the items collected come from the remotest corners of the world. We first tried this exercise in the international encounter for artists’ initiatives called InFest and held in Vancouver, and we have since been practicing it within the framework of The Flood, held in The Hague (Holland) and in the South I Forum, The South Project, Melbourne, Australia.

The instructions we give are simple and unexpected: without previous warning, we ask the public to draw a map of the world, making it clear to them that it does not necessarily have to be a geographic representation, that it may be as personal as they wish, and that they need not sign it, but that the drawing should include some reference to the author’s place of origin and to where he was raised. After the presentation, the maps are attached to a free wall so that everybody present can see the outcomes. Here it is, to be shared with visitors to our site.

Vancouver, Canadá.
Febrary 2004.

InFest

La Haya, Holanda.
March 2004.

The flood

Melbourne, Australia.
July 2004.

The South Project

Rosario, Argentina.
November 2004.

Trama's presentation

Valparaíso, Chile.
March 2005.

EIEI

San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina.
June 2005.

Trama's presentation

Atlas por correo

dicember 2004 ...