Drifts of Memory. A Biocartography of Madrid. Inquiry into the Methodologies of Understanding the City from Subjective Experience

Abstract

The city is the paradoxical and diverse environment where takes place our everyday life. It is the expression of the culture and the social organization of people, and the space that contains our individual and collective memories. This text addresses the relationship between people and their living environment, focusing on this subject form a perspective that aims to build a vision of the city from the memory. For this purpose, we will propose the tools that allow us to do such an inquiry, as it is the case of the autobiographical narratives and the personal cartographies. The first, treated as a dérive through the memories associated with the spaces of the city, and the latter, as a system of representation of the subjective realities drawn from self experience. On this basis, we can take a coherent position about the affordances of these instruments. On one hand, as a source of valuable information capable of providing a better understanding of our living environment. On the other, as a substrate capable of inspiring creative proposals about the city. The working process starts with an autobiographical story that leads the author towards several research guidelines, both concerning theory and practice. On one side, a series of specific considerations on the work´s key concepts will be undergone: city, dérive as an artistic practice, the memory and the maps. On the other, a set of maps of Madrid related to personal memories have been drawn.