Two hundred of these mnemonic maps of Deptford were designed and delivered for the psychogeographic LARP Plutonic Bonding.

These inventory devices were digitally designed as distorted maps of Deptford, combining topographic renders, vectorised plans, hand-drawn illustrations, and grainy textures. Physically, they were made from pigment-printed cotton drill, steel eyelets, nylon cord and thread; this materiality sought to evoke the nautical ties of this landscape.

The starting point of the LARP, in the South-West of the map, depicts a vampiric representation of Danny Pagarani’s sculptural installation. Alongside it are four other locations: the Nøkken lurking below Buzzball Bridge, Christopher Marlowe’s Grave, the ghostly Albury Street, and the shipyards of Deptford’s riverside. Alongside these chthonic places, inky eldritch tendrils seep into the streets of South London.

Plutonic Bonding is a psychogeographic LARP that connects players to terrains, histories and microclimate forecasts across multiple timelines around Southeast London. Equipped with an inventory device that functions as an analogue memory keeper, a crack team of paranormal investigators has studied a cluster of anomalous local disturbances and enlists players as ‘elemental divinators’ to partake in their project of encountering, interpreting and encoding the messages from local spirits of the land… wherein a unified subterranean lore hopes to be uncovered and exhumed.

Plutonic Bonding was written and produced by Bea Xu and curated by Philip Speakman as part of XP+10, celebrating the 10th anniversary of Gossamer Fog.