"[...] cartographic power can undermine democratic principles and ideals such as fairness, justice, and balance. The representational integrity of certain communities can be carved up and dismembered, while concentrated and fortified for others. The rules of this game are clear though: the plan, forever in flux, is never innocent, nor can it be neutral. For as long as population is distributed unevenly and governed by structures of representation, democracy will be an architectural project under construction."
Published on e-flux.
0 Comments
Maps as Media - Course Syllabus by Shannon Mattern Maps reveal, delineate, verify, orient, navigate, anticipate, historicize, conceal, persuade, and, on occasion, even lie. From the earliest maps in cave paintings and on clay tablets, to the predictive climate visualizations and crime maps and mobile cartographic apps of today and tomorrow, maps have offered far more than an objective representation of a stable reality. In this hybrid theory-practice studio we’ll examine the past, present, and future – across myriad geographic and cultural contexts – of our techniques and technologies for mapping space and time. In the process, we’ll address various critical frameworks for analyzing the rhetorics, poetics, politics, and epistemologies of spatial and temporal maps. Throughout the semester we’ll also experiment with a variety of critical mapping tools and methods, from techniques of critical cartography to sensory mapping to time-lining, using both analog and digital approaches. Course requirements include: individual map critiques; lab exercises; individual final critical-creative projects in a format of each student’s choosing; and small-group projects completed. Suggested readings:
This course draws on insights and inspiration from four years’ worth of students in my “Urban Media Archaeology” studio – and is indebted to Jeremy Crampton’s Critical History of Cartography reader; Marisa Olson’s “Media Studies: Experimental Geography Reading List” (Rhizome, March 20, 2009); RISD’s Experimental Geography Research Cluster; Matthew Wilson’s “Critical GIS” graduate seminar; and Wilson’s “Critical and Social Cartography” course. "The example of geopolitical maps shows that maps can expose hidden power relationships and structures, which can form a basis for acts of resistance. Maps can also be practical, offering tips for utopian living and immanent political change. Maps can mobilise affect, leading to subjective and social transformation and can visibilise and valourise alternative forms of relationships such as affinity and the network form as well as marginal spaces and histories."
"Creating utopias has always been an important aspect of anarchist organization, not least because it is a potentially non-hierarchical approach to social change that does not rely on vanguards or mass politics. Furthermore, an often neglected aspect of utopias is their pedagogical value – practicing new ways of living and relating can help us to ‘unlearn’ dominant knowledge practices."
Critical cartography as anarchist pedagogy?Ideas for praxis inspired by the 56a infoshop map archive. Rhiannon Firth |