Mapping emotions with creative materials in disaster zones

What is it about?

In this paper we experiment with a “new materialist methodology” during a one-day workshop to explore residents’ spatio-emotional experiences in a disaster-affected favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We argue that materials with diverse colors, textures, shapes, densities, weights, and smells invoke and evoke diverse emotions with past, present, and future temporalities, and which fall within and beyond the positive-negative emotion binary. Materials can facilitate conviviality and discussion amongst mapping participants, which enables participants to speak about their emotional-spatial experiences with more nuance and complexity.

Featured Image

Photo by Anthony Ievlev on Unsplash

Photo by Anthony Ievlev on Unsplash