Mapping Bristol through the intermediality of the protesting crowd

Through a series of exploratory cartographies, this article revisits the historical relationship between the crowd and the mass media to offer a critical reflection of the digital and physical condition of the protesting crowd today. Using design-led research, this study works through the photographic and video representation of the ‘Kill the Bill’ movement as it took place between March and April 2021 in the city of Bristol, UK. The cartographies that emerge from this process reinforce the formulation of the crowd as intermedia — as bodies, space, and media act upon each other at the time of protest, the conventional representation of the city is disturbed by the performativity of the crowd and the (moving and still) images that capture it.