What Is Story Map?

The What I Heard About The World UK tour draws to a close this month, culminating in two, 12-hour performances of Story Map at The Core at Corby Cube on Saturday 17 March (where the final - for now - performance of What I Heard... happens the night before), and at The Albany in London, on Saturday 24 March.

The performances run 10am - 10pm, free, no need to book: just turn up whenever you want, and stay for as long or short a time as you like.*  If you can't make it in person, you can follow the performance online [click here].

And what is Story Map? This video by Hannah Nicklin explains all:



If you've seen What I Heard About The World, or indeed, if you haven't, but have thought of any stories, from whichever country, that might fit in with our quest for stand-ins, replicas, replacements and fakes - we'd love to hear them. Come in an see us.

Or, if you're not near Corby or London whilst we're up and running at The Core and The Albany, you'll be able to submit stories online (and follow our progress), at the Story Map site, or on Twitter using the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld and by following me @AlexanderKelly.**

Although we'll be working through the world one country at a time, you can send us a story whenever you want, and we'll put it on the map when we get to the right country. At the last run, at ARC in Stockton, we got 130 stories for the 202 countries we put on the map. So, again, we'd love to hear from you.


*Current audience (jointly-held) long-service medals are for 11 and half hours viewing at ARC.
**I'll actually be a digital simulacrum operated by @hannahnicklin for the duration of the story mapping.

"what is and is not news"

Our friend, the artist Rajni Shah sent me this email this morning. I asked her if I could share it here.

Just read this in Stanley Cavell's beautiful essay "The Avoidance of Love" and it made me think of [What I Heard About The World]:

"We no longer know what is and is not news, what is and is not a significant fact of our present history, what is and is not relevant to one's life. The newspaper tells me that everything is relevant, but I cannot really accept that because it would mean that I do not have one life, to which some things are relevant and some not. I cannot really deny it either because I do not know why things happen as they do and why I am not responsible for any or all of it. And so to the extent that I still have feeling to contend with, it is a generalised guilt, which only confirms my paralysis; or else I convert the disasters and sensations reported to me into topics of conversation, for mutual entertainment, which in turn irritates the guilt."
(originally written in 1967)

It's such an important topic, and my work is also a response to this feeling which is why I relate so strongly to it - the work is a way of trying to allow us to see again, or to have some agency in our seeing, our knowing, in the world.

r.x.

 This really speaks to me about one of the strands that's there in the show. Thank you, Rajni.