Re-Choreographing Cortical & Cartographic Maps

An autoethnographic approach to understanding the neurological process of embodied experiences.

Re-Choreographing Cortical & Cartographic Maps presents a transdisciplinary approach to practice-as-research, accompanied by an elaborate theory of practice and a series of four multi-year performance research projects that bring the theory to life. The methodology is, at times, ethnographic, as the author skilfully weaves his Caribbean West African ancestry into a series of complex cortical and geographic maps that become choreographic in every sense of the term.

The central argument of the book is that humans are cognitively embodied through their lived experiences of movement across space and time. The spaces we occupy and the practices we engage in are documented through cortical and cartographic maps. Essentially, as we dwell in and traverse spaces, our brains organize these experiences into unique cortical and spatial maps. These maps ultimately influence how we perceive and interact with the world, a world we also help shape. The book proposes that through performance, we can access and assert the knowledge inherent in the body and the spaces it traverses.