Week 9
Mapping My Research
Below you will find a map that encapsulates the places I have visited over the course over the last two months in Madrid. The map includes some of the most important sites during my stay in Madrid. Among these we find cultural centers, public spaces, and academic centers. I have chosen these fourteen places as my landmarks because they hold a close relationship with SEDOAC, GGFUP, and my own thinking about my research project.
The landmarks chosen have a myriad of meanings. Symbolically, they represent a point of departure for my research interests, as embodied by the #NiUnaMenos mural I talked about in my first blog entry. Intellectually, these landmarks serve as an indication of the academic guidance I’ve received from professors at the Universidad Complutense (both in the Ciudad Universitaria and the Somosaguas campuses) and NYU’s global site in Madrid. And for the purposes of the Fellowship, these landmarks–cultural centers in their majority–served as meeting point with members of SEDOAC. I am explicitly referring to the Casino de la Reina, where we met for four weekends in a row to carry out the A/V workshops, as stated in my eighth blog entry.
Upon a superficial look, one can begin to outline the boundaries that have define my stay in Madrid. The very nature of the geographical composition of my map, namely the clustering of icons in one particular part of the city, begin to carve out my own research. Most of the landmarks I have frequently visited over the last two months are scattered around the Embajadores neighborhood of Madrid, which I explored in detail for my second blog entry. The concentration of sites in this neighborhood comes as no surprise, since the SEDOAC meetings in this multicultural neighborhoods are reflective of the demographic fluctuations produced in the wake globalization. It must be reminded that as of 2017, the Latin American diaspora in the barrio of Embajadores represents 20.87% of the total immigrant population (2,138 out of 44,630 inhabitants), the third largest behind citizens of European Union member states and citizens of Asian countries.
Thus, there is only one boundary in the geography of my research. In fact, if we go for geographical precision, ‘island’ would be a more appropriate term for what the map reflects. There are the sites within the limits of Embajadores–Museo de Artes Tradicionales y Populares, #NiUnaMenos Mural, SOS Racismo Madrid, the Centro Cultural Comunitario Casino de la Reina, and La Casa Encendida Cultural Center–and those outside of it.
A list of places is located below the map. You can click on the icon or name of the landmark in the list, and it will redirect you to the specific geographic location in the map. The list includes a small comment about the significance of the landmark in relation to the time I have spent in Madrid.
I don’t know if this was as satisfying an exercise as it is for me, but I really enjoy the story this map tells about how much of Madrid you’ve seen and how mobile the SEDOAC cause has to be — which sort of turns out to be an asset — because it doesn’t have its own space. The sites where solidarity can be built and maintained exist all over the city. In some way, though, they can also be categorized according to their meaning for SEDOAC’s work. For example, there are host organizations, there are universities that provide researchers, there are seats of government, and there are public squares where demonstrations take place. Did you ever look at Erin Johnson’s map from her work with Paisaje Transversal in Madrid a couple of years ago? You should check it out. I don’t suggest it because I think your map is lacking — quite the contrary, I’d like to see these two maps overlaid upon each other! It makes me wonder: is there a way to map alternative spaces, spaces that exist to counteract the existing hegemonies?