Mapping invisibility

Abstract

A man guides us through Amsterdam.We follow him.He stops at every traffic light, carefully waiting for it to turn green, even if there is no traffic to be seen.During our four-hour walk, he tells us about his life in Africa and why he decided to leave his country to try to build a life in Europe.We ask him questions.He replies.After a while we stand in front of the public library.The man says he loves the library.The calm atmosphere of people reading and studying.The knowledge that is piled up in there.The fact that there is free internet.And that it is one of the few places in the city where it is quiet, no one bothers you and you can take a short nap.The man explains how entering this public building without a library card has become increasingly difficult.A card you can only obtain with a Dutch passport or other identity papers.Documents he doesn't possess.The group is carrying a recording device documenting the conversation and a mobile phone with a mapping application that traces our walk in real-time.Somewhere else in a cultural venue in the city centre, people look at a projection screen that shows a map of the city centre of Amsterdam.A blue line crawls through the streets.That's us.The longer we stand still at a certain location, such as the library, the more the line thickens, transforming into a dot.Other lines trace other groups that are simultaneously walking through the city with their guides, jointly creating a collective map.When our tour ends, our conversation is made available online as an audio download.People can only 'unlock' the story on their mobile phone by physically standing on the exact starting point of the walk and following the exact same route.Deviating from the route results in the voices fading out.In order to engage with the story, the audience is required to literally and carefully retrace the steps of the undocumented person and his or her movements.

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