Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism
Nato Thompson and Independent Curators International
A photo of a secret CIA prison. A map designed to help visitors reach Malibu’s notoriously inaccessible public beaches. Guidebooks to factories, prisons, and power plants in upstate New York. These are some of the more than one hundred projects represented in Experimental Geography, a groundbreaking collection of visual research and mapmaking from the past ten years.
Experimental Geography explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether). This lavishly illustrated book features more than a dozen maps; artwork by Francis Alÿs, Alex Villar, and Yin Xiuzhen; and recent projects by The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Raqs Media Collective, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.
Interview with Nato Thompson
Daniel Quiles: How did the idea for the Experimental Geography exhibition come about?
Nato Thompson: I have long been a friend and colleague of the artist Trevor Paglen, who has been quite influential in the development of this practice. As an artist and geographer, he is often borrowing from these fields in order to produce methods for interpreting space. As much as the world at large still believes firmly in the categories of the Enlightenment, such severe distinctions between fields of study can be unhelpful if not absolutely misleading.Looking around the contemporary art world today, we find numerous practices interested in experimental methods for understanding space itself—from the important work of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Culver City, California, to the experimental walking tours of Francis Alÿs in Mexico City, to poetic interpretations confounding body and place such as with artist Ilana Halperin. The practices are out there and it felt as though the often used lens of art history was simply clunky in interpreting this work. So the exhibition is an opportunity to construct a new lens from an emerging form. Read More...>
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