From January 28-30 I’ll be co-hosting Contestational Cartographies, a symposium at CMU about critical and technocultural approaches to maps. Guest presenters include experimental geographer, Trevor Paglen; radical cartographer Lize Mogel; tactical media artist Rich Pell; concept architect Pablo Garcia; visualization researcher Chris Harrison; artist Susanne Slavick, ecologist/activist Jessica McPherson, and others. The event is co-organized by the unit I direct (the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry), the Miller Gallery, and the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, with the idea in mind that

Maps represent, maps reveal, maps entice, maps distort. They selectively omit, they unwittingly exaggerate, and they even make outright lies. Though maps strive to project authority and objectivity, they cannot help but embed the biases, blind-spots and idiosyncrasies of their human authors. As our lives are played out in increasingly networked realms, we have become carto-literate as never before; we read maps produced by governments and corporate interests, yes, but also collaboratively author maps online, inscribing new representations of ourselves and our priorities. Contestational Cartographies introduces the thoughts of leading “experimental geographers” who employ mapping techniques in new modes of critical practice and cultural research and, in so doing, help us “read between the lines” of the world around us.

For more information, see the Contestational Cartographies web site, or download our programme:

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