On this final day of the exhibition Mapping the Ground | Grounding the Mapwe invite you to an afternoon of lectures, artist talks, debate and an excursion concerning the relationship between maps, users and the landscape.
With the exception of the excursion, the entire program will be conducted in the English language, to accomodate our international guests.
Admission to this program is free of charge. Please help the organisation by notifying us of your participation via email info@zone2source.net
On the basis of her map Park Sporen – which artist Marjolijn Boterenbrood made during a 12 month work period at Zone2Source in Amstelpark – we will experience the less than visible park, under the ground and under the water. We will find out about life under our feet and the amazing processes which are at work there.
The way in which we map the world tells a lot about how we deal with the world. While contemporary cartographic methods are showing an increasing abstraction of the earth, in the exhibition Mapping the Ground | Grounding the Map five international artists present work in which alternative carthographic strategies are developed which makes the connection between human and earth visible. On the last day of the exhibition three of the participating artists – Esther Polak, Antti Tenetz en Cora Jongsma – will discuss the ideas behind their work. The afternoon is introduced with a lecture by prof. Sybille Lammes on cartographic methods in the digital age. Afterwards she will enter into conversation with the artists about the issues at hand.
Sybille Lammes (professor of New Media and Digital Culture, Universiteit van Leiden and member of the Playfull Mapping Collective) discusses how the quality of mapping has changed now that we and our mapping interfaces are engaged in a constant process of adapting while ‘on the go’. What possibilities does this present in terms of mutual visual and spatial creation? And how does this affect our understanding of mobility and mutability?
About Sybille Lammes
03:30 – 03:50 PM
Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum create work about mobility, movements and landscape and the new technologies that shape our perception. They explore how navigating through the landscape gives meaning to it. They are fascinated by innovative ways to depict movement itself and to make visible how this changes one’s experience of space.The artists will discuss amongst others their work NomadicMILK, shown in the current exhibition, in which they created a cartographic representation of local and global forms of distribution of milk in Nigeria.
03:50 – 04:10 PM
Cora Jongsma will discuss her art based research on the influence of agricultural interventions on the morphology of the Lionserpolder (Greidhoeke, Friesland), which she completed last year for her master Landscape History at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. She sets out to connect human and landscape by presenting the land as a story. Feltscapes, on display in the exhibition, visualize the culture- historical characteristics of the Lionserpolder by showing the combination of natural formed relief and the landscape as cultivated by farmers of the ‘Old Land’. The Felscapes functioned as discussion pieces with the famers on their relation to the land.
Alex Gekker (lecturer at the Media department, University of Amsterdam) researches the way digital maps are being made and the decision that go into their creation. Digital maps are on the one hand ubiquitous (we all use similar maps) while at the same time unique (those maps learn our preferences and become personalized). He suggests the term ‘uniquitous’ to describe the work digital maps do in the world and relates this to the changing nature of digital media and cartographic practices. Ultimately, the goal is to offer a new conceptual framework for understanding the emerging power relations between map makers and map users.
About Alex Gekker
05:00 – 05:20 PM
Antti Tenetz is an artist and experimental documentarist from Finland. His work centers on multi-disciplinairy cross overs between art and science in order to study the relation between human and nature. His themes range from the Siberian bear cult to digital representation of sensory systems of animals. His work often makes use of modern technology such as drones and satelite tracking. He focuses on experiences and relations with nature, privacy, law, landscape and natural values of cohabitation with other species in shaping our natural world such as in the work Traces on display in the exhibition .
At the close of the finissage of Mapping the Ground | Grounding the Map, we will debate about possible alternative relations to the earth as a critical reflection on the abstract cartographic methods that characterize the Anthropocene. From the two dimensional map of the world we need to return to the three dimensional earth to anchor ourselves again in its material processes. We need new images to tell the story of the cohabitation of human and earth again. The artists presented here create alternative strategies to map land in which lived experience and connection with the earth is expressed.
During the debate, Sybille Lammers and Alex Gekker engage with the three artists over the issues their art projects bring forward.
