Concrete Dialogues, narrating the city

Concrete Dialogues

The cultural mediation applied by the web to a territory representation is often conveyed by Google Maps, unfortunately the proprietary de facto standard for urban mapping. But even within its software constraints, many initiatives has started to capitalize on the possibility of collectively share some data, being based on a specific place. In Concrete Dialogues project by The Concrete Organization, local writers have been able to narrate their own territory, posting their writings related to a specific area of Perth (Australia), instantly represented as new red dot on the map. The successful initiative has especially attracted young writers, finally being able to engage with this sort of ‘literature mapping’, involving their daily living roots. This is a collective narrative on shared public spaces, where the city writes about itself, formulating a geography of personal memories and feelings. The whole text collection is one of the thousands potential literary mirrors that would reflect the ‘soul’ of the city, blown out by some of its internal and functional agents.