In a Jar 6: Mapping The Town Anew

The Line - The Town

A line joins one point to another. On a street map, places are joined according to a certain context, as in the public transport network, for example. Marking spots with pins and joining them on a map with a band or thread is a method of town-planning we know from analog times and was similarly used in TV crime drama or for coordinating work processes. Tagging creates an image from which we hope to discern a pattern so as to draw conclusions as to interrelation or flow.

I marked the Gelsenkirchen street map in a similar way. Each jar's place of origin was marked with a pin. I then joined the dots with embroidery thread, stitching directly into the paper. The threads link the places of origin and, thematically by colour, the content of each jar, thus forming a dense net.

Yellow – organic
Black – synthetic materials
Mauve – mineral
Green – personal objects
Blue – water

Each location is linked to several in a network and creates a new topology of the town.

Before I started sitching, I expected a confusion of lines bt the resulting image is startingly clearly structured.

• This project picked up the theme set by the Szeniale24 Arts Festival "Stadt.finden" (Take Place, Find the Town) in several ways:Finding things - on the street, hidden in drawers, inherited, or made in some way.
• The jars found their way to the collecting point.
• New paths were superimposed over the urban network of streets.
• A new topology of Geslenkirchen was created.