Sigirino Monumental Mountain

Kunstlicht , 2020

People shape spaces; spaces shape people in return. This article focuses on artistic experiments with cartography from transnational contemporary visual artists. They use diverse engagements in mapping to (re)present the city, across Istanbul to Amsterdam, as they look to cartography for their work’s formal and thematic substance. The artists in focus deal with topics including but not limited to colonial pasts, mobilities, gender politics, and mapmaking’s entanglement with the processes of global modernities. They help us think in novel ways of structure and agency since each articulation (a political act) is a re-thinking and re-formulation of the cartographic discourse. The diversity of the artistic approaches ranges from using their bodies in their interventions—a bodily performance—that in turn leads to a tactile map of the city, to presenting imagined geographies, overlapping temporalities. These polychromous cartographies offer an alternative grasp of cartography where maps do not represent a preexisting measurable reality, but rather manifest and unfold rich fantastic geographies and cultural imaginaries.

Subjectivity, 2020

This paper claims that maps and the "act of mapping" have the capacity to disrupt symbolic horizons concerning representations of space constructing aesthetic, political and subjective worldviews. These worldviews constitute modes of subjectivity that challenge the notion of the Cartesian subject, and put forward a "situated" concept of subjectivity. Through an intertextual analysis of Deleuze and Guattari, and Heidegger's late essay "Building Dwelling Thinking," Moro pursues a possible redefinition of mapping as assemblage or gathering point of the fourfold. This redefinition in turn indicates the becoming-space of a narration that constitutes particular kinds of world views and subjectivities. The lines between narration, mapping, and mythology are further blurred in recent art projects, where through the 'cartographic imagination' artists deliberately deconstruct the rational appearance of the map to expose current political impasse in a globalized world.

J-Reading, 2018

Nowadays, new speculative and experimental ferments on analog and digital mapping are variously infusing both "insiders" (geographers, cartographers, urban planners, GIS scientists) and "outsiders" (Art historians and creative practitioners)' work. To properly evidence and discuss the excitement of mapping that is emerging through a wide range of visual and aesthetical contributions, it is important to contextualize and compare such unconventional practices of map-making in terms of reflexivity and transitivity of geographic knowledge production. This means respectively to distinguish different roles assumed by geographers, cartographers and GIS scientists in the interpretation and application of new theories and practices of mapping , but also to take seriously into consideration the creative mapping culture which is becoming visible outside of their discipline, for example in the artistic domain. In this report, I focus on the " reflexive " stance, by giving a personal, thus not exhaustive, overview of the creative trajectories on mapping currently explored in carto/geography. After emplacing the theory and experimentation on maps and geospatial data within the context of academic geographic production, I discuss three projects where geographers and GIS scientists are at the forefront of the concurrent rethinking of the map as a deforming and multidimensional tool for spatial analysis.

TYPP, 2023

The traditional appearance of geographical maps often reinforces singular and hegemonic worldviews. This essay explores the transformative potential of cartography, advocating for participatory mapmaking methods that challenge conventional spatial representations, fostering shared authorship and collective belonging to a place. Maps are far from neutral or objective; they reflect their creators' biases, perspectives, and values. They shape our understanding of geography, often marginalizing local and less-heard voices. This text emphasizes the significance of collective authorship, belonging, and localized knowledge. The essay puts forward the concept of "counter-mapping" as a potent instrument for communities to create alternative maps that contest hegemonic depictions. These counter-maps navigate between social, cultural, and historical perspectives, humanizing space and revealing concealed realities. The text underscores the potential role of design in this process, promoting more collective, organic production. This approach can lead to more situated, diverse worldviews, providing a platform for appreciating the aesthetics, emotions, and experiences of a place. The author's work on "subjective atlases" is an example that prioritizes the voices of those who inhabit a place, incorporating their experiences into mapmaking. This approach mitigates alienation and fosters a plural, interconnected perception of place. Ultimately, the essay invites designers and those engaged in visual communication to explore the potential of collaborative cartography, addressing power dynamics and embracing plural design methods. Doing so can contribute to emancipation and a more inclusive, interconnected representation of our surroundings.

Cartographic Perspectives

Progress in Human Geography, 2013

This report focuses on the growing interest in the relationship between maps, narratives and metanarratives. Following a brief historical contextualization of these relationships, this report explores their current state in the Geoweb era. Using the distinction between story maps and grid maps as an analytical framework, I review emerging issues around the extensive use of technologies and online mapping services (i.e. Google maps) to convey stories and to produce new ones. Drawing on literature in film studies, literary studies, visual arts, computer science and communication, I also emphasize the emergence of new forms of spatial expressions interested in providing different perspectives about places and about stories associated to places. In sum, I argue that mapping both vernacular knowledge and fiction is central to understanding places in depth.

2024

2024

At the 2019 International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) in Amsterdam, the map historian Peter Barber stated in his ground-breaking keynote speech that ‘with a few exceptions, the emphasis in the traditional history of cartography [before 1980s] was on European mapping. In the age of European empires, it was assumed that, on grounds of technological skill as well as cultural superiority, European map making set the standard and that indigenous mapping in other parts of the world, with the partial exceptions of the medieval Arab world and China, was ipso facto inferior and hardly worth consideration.’ In recent decades the approach to the study of maps has changed and the field has been transformed. Researchers from different academic backgrounds have discovered the relevance of maps to their disciplines, and the primacy of the essentially European concepts of scale and accuracy as the sole criteria for assessing the quality of maps has been questioned. Finally, non-European indigenous mapping has been brought into the field. This paper makes a significant contribution to this development by presenting an important collection of Tibetan maps, namely those of the Harrer Collection held at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, probably the largest corpus of Tibetan geographic regional maps outside of Tibet. For the first time, we show the entire set of maps and describe their cartographic characteristics. We also provide the Tibetan spelling, transliteration and translations for the numerous Tibetan inscriptions and explanations. We have endeavoured to study the maps using a comprehensive approach, and we discuss what we can learn from them in various respects: the human and geographic landscapes they show; their makers; the role they might have played within the historical context and the society in which they were produced; their circulation; and their role as historical sources.

2019

Excursions A visit to the HEK collection (Floria Benavides) Looks at books Cartografia e topografia italiana del XVI secolo. Catalogo ragionato delle opere a stampa by Stefano Bifolco and Fabrizio Ronca, with contributions from Andrea Cantile, Annalisa D’Ascenzo, Fabio Fatichenti – Gaia Andreozzi, Clemente Marigliani, Alessandro Signoretti (Wouter Bracke) Lost Maps of the Caliphs | Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo by Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (Nicola Boothby) Mediterranean Cartographic Stories - Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Masterpieces from the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation Collection edited by Panagiotis N. Doukellis (Luis A. Robles Macias) Pictures at an Exhibition The World as a Globe (Andrew Cookson) Coming face-to-face with maps – The world of C215 (Wulf Bodenstein) Miscellaneous The Brussels Map Circle as a study case - Interview with Diane Staelens (Jean-Christophe Staelens) News from Germany - 14th International Atlas Days break new ground (Wulf Bodenstein) News from London - IMCoS/Hellen Wallis award 2019 (Wulf Bodenstein) ICA-workshop in Utrecht - Controlling the waters : seas,lakes and rivers on historic maps and charts (Caroline De Candt) History and Cartography Ethnographic mapping in the light of the Peace Treaties (Rick Smit)

Object-Oriented Cartography: Maps as Things, by Tania Rossetto, invites the reader to consider new ways of relating to cartographic images and practices. Drawing from recent advances across diverse academic fields such as object-oriented ontology (OOO), critical cartography, and visual studies, Rossetto provides a deeply personal account of our everyday interactions with maps. Over the course of eleven chapters (plus an Introduction and Conclusion) she develops an innovative research methodology that foregrounds the relational, phenomenological, and agential capacities of spatial representations. She accomplishes this through synthetic academic research illuminated by practical examples and inventive case studies. The book’s overarching project is to re-imagine maps as more than flat representations of an external reality, and to see them instead as lively actors that shape our world in powerful and intimate ways. Therefore, it seems only appropriate to begin a review of the book with a discussion of its own “thingness” as an object in the material world. The seven by ten inch, 149 page, hardcover volume is disarmingly slim, and the publisher’s stock purple damask pattern cover design is modestly understated. The terse, somewhat obscure title—in bold, condensed, sans serif capitals—catches the eye, and gives just a hint of the rigorous intellectual work contained within. A casual reader might be put off by the stark title, but it is balanced by the straightforward (though by no means simple) subtitle promising a discussion of Maps as Things. Opening the book, one finds: quotations of favourable reviews from leading researchers in the field of map studies, a short description of the book, the bibliographic information, and a concise table of contents. There is, unfortunately, no index of images or photographs. Read more at (open access) https://cartographicperspectives.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1607/