LLIA APOSTOLOU - IDAT306 - PROJECT SUMMARY

I began by looking at the work of Tracey Emin and became interested by her use of textiles, in particular appliqué. I also examined her use of autobiographical themes within her work. Following on from this, I became interested in the personal ways we map spaces. This was due to my own experiences of living in Plymouth during my time at university, having realised that I mapped the town not by road names, place names or house numbers, but according to my own memories and emotions from the time I have spent here.

In a critical sense, this links to the idea of Topophilia: 'Coined by Chinese-American geographer Yi-Fu Tuan in his 1974 book entitled Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. Tuan claims that topophilia "can be defined widely so as to include all emotional connections between physical environment and human beings."'

Another practice which informed this piece has been that of GPS walking, where GPS technology is used to track where a person has travelled. Often this is done to create pictures or patterns when plotted onto a map.

I decided to make use of autobiographical themes from Emin, along with the medium of appliqué, combined with the idea of GPS walking. My aim became to create my own personal 'map' of Plymouth.

I used the idea of GPS walking in an analogue manner, by walking the route and sewing it onto a prototype version of my map. However, instead of just representing the route taken as a plotted line, I recorded personal memories that sprung up as I walked my route. This was done by sewing words as I walked, a video of this can be seen here. I felt that the digital forms of GPS walking lacked a deeper emotional meaning, due to the distancing between the experience of walking the route and the end result, hence why I chose to try it in this analogue way. The physicality of sewing my memories while walking within the space is an attempt to lend credence to the mapping of something so personal. In other words, I couldn't just make it up at home; I had to be in the space to trigger my real memories.

Walking and sewing is surprisingly difficult and takes a long time, so my prototype became my 'memory recording' version. I realised that walking and sewing the same route again for the final piece would be somewhat futile, as I'd already done it! So I transposed the words from the prototype onto the final piece.

The route I chose to walk was carried out in an area of Plymouth which holds many memories for me. It is close to the university and several of the houses I have lived in during my time here. The route itself also holds meaning, because it spells my name. As this was to be an autobiographical project, the use of my name lends another aspect of making this a 'personal map' of Plymouth. Going through life with a relatively unique name has helped shape the person that I am. It was sheer luck that I could spell my name using the roads in the area I wanted to use!

The map itself was created using appliqué, using old clothes of mine which I have worn in Plymouth. I have included jeans, t-shirts, pajamas, underwear and socks. I have endeavoured to make this map personalised with the almost all of the materials used. The backing material came from my mother, who saved it from a skip several years ago, after some flooding in a warehouse near her workplace. I have used material from the same roll for several other projects over the years. I used green thread to plot my memories, just because green is my favourite colour.



Click here to see this image larger.

It was originally intended that the final piece would simply be the map I had created, however I felt this was lacking something, perhaps an indication of my intentions. I wanted to include more substance. I therefore decided to display it as a triptych. The centre panel is obviously the most important, my personal map. To create the left panel, a video of the GPS route is displayed. This was created using a Trackstick to record my route and the software here. This is to provide the viewer with the very blank, digital representation of the route. To create the right panel, I have recorded a video of me walking the route and simply just chatting about memories and suchlike. This becomes a content-rich personal panel, a polar opposite of the GPS route on the other side. Each of the side panels provides context for the personal map in the centre, which is a synthesis of the outer panels.


   

I briefly displayed my piece at Plymouth Arts Centre. Here's some documentary material of this event:



 

This is a short, distilled summary of my project. To see the entire workings and development, visit my blog for further insights.

Thanks to Chris Speed, Plymouth Arts Centre and Ross McGrath for their assistance during this project.