For the second outside screening I went to Moma to see Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project. 

Projected on several screens are different stories of people who have had to travel illegally throughout South Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.  Each screen tells a different person’s story map.  The projections are of a map of the areas the person traveled.  The individual narrator would trace out their journey and explain how and why they traveled to each destination.   All of the stories were subtitled, but Moma also provided benches for seating and 3 headphones per projection.  The projections were situated in diagonal rows and while viewing one story a person could see what was happening on another screen.

I think this curiosity about what each screen held kept people moving from projection to projection.  From far a way it would almost look like each screen was showing a loop of the same clip, just at different times.  But each map was specifically curated for each narrator.  The journeymen came from all different types of backgrounds and ages.  There was even one with a young Somalian girl.

The length of the stories varied a bit, but they were all relatively short and easy to re-watch several times.  The commentary people gave about the videos while watching them gave an added layer to experience, that might please some or anger others.  Personally, I did not mind the extra chatter and interactions with other Moma guests.  There was no real way to quietly intake each person’s story, and depending on their situation I often found the need to decompress between viewing another map.  Luckily, the videos were short and it was easy to re-watch one if had missed a part during my first view.

Unlike traditional film, this viewing was open and spaced apart; you were forced to move from place to place.  Just like the narrators, there was nothing sedentary about the experience.  Even though there was not a lot of movement on the screen, the distances traveled and the many lines created by the chaos of their journey was visually striking.  The shapes created by the mappers, and more importantly the geopolitical reason why these people had to make such travels left a lasting impression.

Khalili’s exhibition will run through August 28 and is highly recommended.