Programming
Emmanuelle Jacques
Les chemins de traverse
I want to know the movements of my fellow citizens; to see where their routes intersect; to make them feel how, by tracing their comings and goings on a map, one can project oneself into the territory and become aware of the way one perceives and understands it; to show that by emerging, this drawing can bring a better understanding of the city and its occupants.
During the festivities for the Anniversary if Montreal, in collaboration of the Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles, Emmanuelle Jacques is proposition a workshop for all workers of the neightborhood. Being installed in front of the St-Laurent metro station from 7:30 am to 9:30 am, 11:30 am à 1:30 pm and 4 pm to 6 pm, you are more than welcome to join us to redesign your city !
I want to know how my fellow-citizens commute; see where their routes intersect; what are the places they are drawn to, they avoid, they are dreaming of. I want to share how, by tracing our own paces on a map, we can project ourselves into that territory and become aware of the way we experience and appreciate it; that the drawing emerging from this act revitalizes our comprehension of the city and its occupants.
Taking the form of creative workshops, my approach is related to social cartography movements, aiming for the construction of collective knowledge by and for the inhabitants of a given territory. My intervention tool is a set of handmade stamps, featuring signs and symbols reclaimed from the language of cartography.
These stamps constitute a legend, an alphabet that participants can appropriate to represent their personal territory. My equipment, rough-and-ready, fits into a bag. Because the workshops are intended for a general public, participants feel sometimes uncomfortable to perform the act of creation. But printing with stamps is fun, spontaneous and compulsive. The gesture, hesitant at first, quickly turns into a creative impulse. The map becomes the framework for a succession of stories, anecdotes and narrations; a pretext to connect with people while thinking about the way we occupy, cross, appropriate and share territory — and the ways to reinvent it.
