Visual Editions
Great Looking Stories
Where You Are is a book of maps. And it’s also a website. It’s a collection of writing by 16 writers, artists, thinkers and visuals that explode what a map can be.
Sixteen writers, thinkers, artists responded to what their map would be, bringing together human stories around modern, everyday personal moments reflections. Those stories range from Chloe Aridjis’ short story mapping out the daily journeys of a homeless woman in Mexico City, to John Simpson’s essay that looks at the perils of following GPS systems in South Africa, to James Bridle mapping the technology and looking at how GPS was developed in the first place, to Geoff Dyer mapping out his childhood in Cheltenham according to sex, death and drugs, to Leanne Shapton documenting her everyday desk objects at the end of each working day.
Where You Are plants the flag at an amazing map-shifting point: from one kind of map — the geographical kind that gets you get from a to b — to another kind of map altogether — a life map that tells human stories about our everyday. Here is a book of maps that will leave you feeling completely lost.
We’re completely sold out of the physical book with no immediate plans to reprint, but you can still read, see, explore it all online here.
Contributors:
Introduced by Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Editor
Chloe Aridjis, Lila Azam Zanganeh, Alain de Botton, James Bridle, Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer, Olafur Eliasson, Sheila Heti + Ted Mineo, Tao Lin, Valeria Luiselli, Leanne Shapton, John Simpson, Adam Thirlwell, Peter Turchi, Will Wiles, Denis Wood
Book design by Bibliothèque
Website by The Workers
Released November 2013 as a book and on the screen
by Visual Editions, with the help from our friends at Google Creative Labs
978-0-9565692-4-0
Box with 16 individual maps
£35
See also
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www.where-you-are.com
Our News
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Where We Are
In the week where the run-up to the holiday season feels in full gear and the year end shut down is within reach, we thought it would be nice to raise our glogg filled heads and do a bit of lift-lidding on our new book in a bid to kick into fresh beginnings.
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Where You Are Live Events: With Geoff + Joe; Sheila + Tao
Our Where You Are live events gives you the chance to hear Geoff Dyer and Joe Dunthorne, and Sheila Heti and Tao Lin tell you all about growing up in Cheltenham, mapping literary landscapes, modernising the I Ching to help find your way when you’re lost, and mapping crazy sci-fi hamsters in 2027.
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First Look Inside Where You Are
For those of you who loved our new look Tristram Shandy, our tactile experience Tree Of Codes, our delightfully disorientating Composition No. 1, our turnable Kapow!, here is a first peek inside our latest and very nearly on our shores Great Looking Story, with 16 very different maps to make sure we all get fantastically lost.