The map and the rumor.

The field map began as a sketch — fourteen cities, drawn by hand on a piece of paper left on a table in Lisbon. That sketch is now, two years later, a structured index of hundreds of works across twelve regions. Something happened in between, and this issue tried to name it.

A place enters the canon in two ways: either a specific work puts it there — Wong Kar-wai placed Hong Kong in a certain register permanently — or a rumour accumulates slowly: a mention in one essay, a walk in another, a paragraph in a third, until the place is understood to be a place-in-the-index.

This issue was partly a reflection on our own methods and partly an invitation. We published the field map with the marginalia visible.