-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        \\Photocartographies\\//Announcement and call for entries//
Date:   Mon, 9 Feb 2009 14:51:58 +0000
From:   Brian Rosa <[log in to unmask]>
To:     [log in to unmask]
References:     <[log in to unmask]>





*//Announcement and call for entries//*


<http://goog_1234025601132>

/Photocartographies: Tattered Fragments of the Map/
<http://thelimitsoffun.org/photocartographies>

Submission Deadline: March 31, 2009

Exhibition Opens in Los Angeles on May 16


Photography and cartography are entwined in similar processes of subject
orientation that structure our experience of social, environmental and
virtual landscapes. A map is not a representation so much as a system of
propositions. This exhibition reveals mapping itself as a generative
process of knowledge creation, a liberatory method for re-imagining and
re-imaging our world, its built and natural environments, and the
relationship between space and place.


Independent curators Adam Katz (Los Angeles) and Brian Rosa (Mexico
City) seek submissions of 2D images and artworks that play with the map
as an epistemological tool. Appropriate work includes cartographies that
use photography as well as photographs that employ a cartographic
vocabulary (location, territory, scale). The exhibition will emphasize
an interdisciplinary approach to a broad spectrum of visual culture – we
welcome submissions from social scientists, urbanists, and designers as
well as artists.


Images should be sent by email to [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Include "Photocartographies" in the subject

Preferred .jpg or .pdf

No more than 10 images

No more than 5mb of attachments per email

Please include a brief introduction, artist statement or relevant links
online



*More about the Exhibition*

Maps are tied to a history of authority, scientific rationality and
use-value, masking the underlying subjectivity and biases of their
creation. Practical application, satellite-based navigation, the
disciplines of geography and, more recently, urban planning, have
popularized and proliferated map imagery while helping to cement an aura
of unassailable cartographic objectivity. Maps have become ubiquitous
tools in our daily lives, and are traditionally identified in accordance
with a few simple assumptions: they are graphic representations of
spatial relations and their creators are technicians bound to graphic
systems that reflect a physical reality. However, the true nature of
maps is one of distortion, beginning with their projections of
three-dimensional surfaces onto two-dimensional frames, and compounded
by territorialization, a habit of identifying, naming and claiming. Maps
are image-objects in which different conceptions and configurations of
time and space are created, not just charted.

In 1858 Gaspard Felix Tournachon executed the first aerial photographs
from a hot air balloon tethered above the Paris skyline. In turn, Baron
Haussmann employed this omniscient view to redesign the city, combating
its perceived disorder. Over the last 150 years, people have used
zeppelins, airplanes, and satellites to photographically capture and
archive every piece of our globe with increasing accuracy and frequency.
More recently, public access to maps, as well as the access to their
means of production, have been greatly enabled by photo
reproduction—most notably with the prevalence of digital information
tools such as Google Earth and online mapping sites spurred by satellite
imagery. Borges' story of mapping the entire Kingdom1
<http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddxt89gh_17dbk522ds#sdendnote1sym> with
exactitude may seem improbably complete. And yet, maps can never escape
being part of the world their creators try to represent. Like the
photographic image, "The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in
upon itself; it constructs the unconscious"2
<http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddxt89gh_17dbk522ds#sdendnote2sym> by
coding power, politics, and aesthetics. All maps are still projections,
and all territories are maps.

1 <http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddxt89gh_17dbk522ds#sdendnote1anc>
Borges, J.L. "Of Exactitude in Science." /A Universal History of
Infamy/, Penguin Books, London, 1975.

2 <http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddxt89gh_17dbk522ds#sdendnote2anc>
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. /A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. /U of Minnesota Press, 1987.