<

PROGRAMMING & CURATION


Cartography Between Art, Science and Politics

2018

In a world of filter bubbles and fake news the importance of understanding how we know what we know and where our information/knowledge comes from is greater than ever. We can use mapping to help us understand these invisible structures that control parts of lives and reveal the ways our perceptions are shaped.

In this hands-on mapping workshop we will create maps of personal knowledge (e.g. personal itineraries, common perceptions, fears, etc.). We will ask: how do I map my perception of the world (e.g. through news media or walking)? Participants will apprehend “their state of our knowledge of the world” on a particular subject as well as create representations which bridge the real and the imaginary.

Philippe Rekacewicz is a cartographer and information designer. After completing his training as a geographer at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, he worked from 1988 to 2014 as a permanent staff for the monthly journal Le Monde Diplomatique. He concurrently directed, from 1996 to 2008, the Norwegian cartographic unity of the United Nations Programme for Environment (UNEP), the GRID-Arendal. A specialist in Geopolitics and International Relations, he addresses especially topics linked to migrations, refugees and populations’ forced displacements, as well as frontiers. He works at present on several socio-cartographic projects (public and private spaces, perception and representation of frontiers) and explores the links between cartography, art and politics, like the art’s contributions on maps’ production and the political uses of maps as objects of propaganda and manipulation. He also leads a research on the “new cartographic writings” and the emergency of radical, critical and experimental cartographies. Since 2006, he attends project of artistic mappings and political art in several European countries. He is associate researcher at the departement of Anthropology of the University of Helsinki (programme Crosslocation - Trade, Transit and Transport). He is the current editor of the research blog on mapping and visualizing Visionscarto at http://visionscarto.net/