MOVING BODIES RE-PRESENTING THE CITY: EMBODIED MAPPING OF THE CItuational

This research project utilizes dance improvisation to propose an alternative mapping of the city as an ever-moving situation, opposing the fixed entity typically represented in conventional maps. It explores the gap between the static, top-down city map and the uncontainable “real-time” city it seeks to represent. Drawing on J.B. Harley’s critique of mapping, the project repurposes processes such as selection, omission, hierarchy, and symbolization as movement tasks that attune perception to the “CITuational” — the city as a situation in constant flux.

Rather than striving for an accurate representation of the city, the project approaches mapping as a practice of (re)presentation: presenting the city in new ways through embodied experience. In line with James Corner's understanding of mapping as a generative and relational practice, these elements are repurposed as tools for attuning perception and experience to the city, enabling new relations and understandings of the urban environment to emerge. Through movement, observation, filming, drawing, and writing, the project attends to fleeting aspects of urban life — behavior, movement, sound, weather, and encounter — foregrounding bodily perception and exploring alternative, bottom-up ways of connecting to the city in the present moment.