How is the image of a city constructed? Who is the author of the large collection of oral, textual and visual data meeting in it? Can cities be read? If so, who holds control over their interpretation?

This exhibition departs from the idea of cities as spatial archives embracing a multiplicity of meanings, juxtaposed narratives and shifting hierarchies, highlighting eight artworks echoing this metaphor while underlining a tension and resistance to the rules of classification and codification flattening the city and its scales of representation. The artistic proposals open spaces for new interpretations; a dialogical context in which present, imaginary and emergent histories/narrations are collected, visualized, remembered and also erased from our daily lives.

The curatorial strategy of this project reflects on the method of cultural mapping as a cultural inquiry and as an inherently interdisciplinary research phenomenon: a combination of hybrid, mixed, multimodal or alternative discourses using the map and its associated texts as legitimate forms for academic and public inquiry, cultural advocacy, and knowledge mobilization.

Mapping Berlin is a concept developed by Andrzej Raszyk and evolves from previous projects around the subject of data and history visualization researched by the Berlinerpool Arts Network curatorial team (Andrzej Raszyk & Paz Ponce).

The project is realised with kind support of the Berlin Senate Administration for Culture and Europe, the Exhibition Fund and the Exhibition Remuneration for Municipal Galleries and in cooperation with Associazione 22:37.