Dreaming of a Post-Covid world. Mark making and Pandemic Storytelling Webinar for Livingmaps Network

Almost overnight our landscapes were transformed as social distancing and stay at home rules were enforced. Confined to our homes, our imaginations have been our best ally to explore other places real or imagined. Drawing, or perhaps more broadly speaking – mark making, is a deeply subjective tool that we can use to enter into other spaces beyond the here and now, perhaps into memories or imaginations of a possible future or as a form of visually representing emotional states. Quarantine has highlighted spatial inequalities and poses questions about our socio-political reality, prompting us to think of alternative arrangements. Dreaming about a different world outside can give us comfort but can also help us clarify how we would like the world to be. This Livingmaps Network meet up focusses on the role of drawing maps as a form of storytelling about places. It explores the role of mark - making as an imaginative and performative act. Part one of the webinar is around a project co-curated by myself and Sol Perez-Martinez. The call invited submissions from artists to make a drawn response to the theme “Dreaming of a post Covid world”.

Some of the artists who submitted to the call speak about their drawings and the different ways in which they have interpreted the theme through drawing and collage. In part two, Joel Seath discusses children’s interpretations of mapping the pandemic with a project he did with a group of year 5 students.

We also wrote an article about the project which can be found here: https://livingmaps.squarespace.com/dreaming-of-a-postcovid-world