This book, Marrickville Backyards, was necessary preparatory reading for our field work in Marrickville. Published in 2001 by Marrickville Community History Group, with only a small print run, this book is not easy to get your hands on. We found it through Sydney’s much-loved Gould’s Book Arcade. Our second hand copy comes with a note on […]

We read Jessica Barnes entry ‘Gluten’ in the Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen, published by Cultural Anthropology. Barnes begins with a deceptively simple question: what does the Anthropocene taste like? This is an excellent starting point to imagine a series of material, semiotic, and sensory entanglements and assemblages generated in the Anthropocene (if we want […]

I just finished reading ‘A Philosophy of Walking’ for obvious reasons. Mapping Edges are avid walkers, and philosophers of walking. The book is a wonderful meditation on what walking does for thinking. Gros begins with the proposition that walking is not a sport, and then he meanders through history (albeit mostly Western male history), telling […]

I don’t often get boating invitations. This week, when Clare Britton asked my to climb aboard the newly renovated ‘Sally’ at the Tempe Pier, I didn’t hesitate. As part of her research project A Week on the Cooks River, Clare is spending time observing, describing, rowing the Cooks. AC: So can you tell me what […]

America is full of superlatives. I’m usually not seduced. But the biggest rooftop garden in the world got my attention.     As a working farm, Brooklyn Grange is only open to visitors once a week, on Wednesdays (if you visit NYC keep this in mind) when they offer a guided tour. So, with my mother […]

This is a short documentation of the first Mapping Edges walk around Marrickville while in residence at Frontyard in March 2016. It shows some key elements of our methodology: we walk slowly, and analyse plant life and the way plants design the urban environment. Also it often rains.