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An Atlas of Radical Cartography, edited by artists Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat (Amazon USA and UK)
The editors say: An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The map is inherently political-- and the contributions to this book wear their politics on their sleeves. An Atlas of Radical Cartography provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.
The slipcase contains a set of ten maps and a collection of essays by artists, architects, designers, and writers who illuminate the maps and explore their role as political agent. An Atlas is one of the most intelligent, thought-provoking and original publications i've read in a long long time. First there is a purely aesthetic pleasure of unfolding the maps and discovering the careful, unique and innovative design of each one. Then the essays are engrossing. They are written by people who have a story to tell you, they are passionate about it, they are angry or worried by the current state of affair but they are also smart enough to know that the best way to solve a problem is to adopt a pro-active attitude. Right from the cover, showing an "upside-down"map, we are faced with the fact that even the most banal and innocent-looking map has its own agenda, that it is extremely difficult to separate cartography from politics and ideology. Far from being neutral accessories which would merely help you go from point A to point B, maps are often used as instruments for controlling and shaping beliefs. Conversely, maps can also be at the service of protest and social change. That's what the contributors of the Atlas demonstrate. Deliberately, openly and quite convincingly.
The first map transports you a few decades ago in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Formed in the mid-late 70s, Unnayan was a civil activist groups which campaigned on dwelling, health, labour, schooling and various rights-related issues met by communities in urban and rural areas of eastern India. Unnayan was involved in projects that including preparing maps that identified settlements which existed in Calcutta at the time but were blanked out in officila maps. Elaborated in collaboration with the communities, the maps helped them locate water pumps, roads, but it also made these communities visible on a space which official maps would otherwise define as "vacant land." The vast majority of these maps are destroyed by floods or stolen. Jai Sen, a member of Unnayan, reconstructs fragments of these experiments and puts them on record in Other Worlds, Other Maps: Mapping the Unintended City, his contribution for An Atlas of Radical Cartography.
All the other maps are contemporary. The Institute for Applied Autonomy discusses tactical cartography and how locative media technology can be used by activists as cold and precise weapons to foster critical social engagement. They illustrate the concept by detailing their project iSee, a web-based application developed in collaboration with NYCLU and the Surveillance Camera Players to chart the locations of CCTV cameras in Manhattan. By checking iSee, users can find routes that avoid these cameras ("paths of least surveillance") allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being "caught on tape" by unregulated security monitors. Their essay explains how stories about the iSee application spread all over the media and generated a series of discussions and debates amongst a -so far- unsuspecting audience. The work also extended to camera-mapping workshops which assumed the double role of rendering the proliferation of surveillance cameras tangible to a general audience and creating an empirical basis for challenging policing and public safety policy. Visible Collective/Naeem Mohaimen interviews Trevor Paglen about his investigation into extraordinary rendition flights, the tension between art and activism as exemplified by a look at Mark Lombardi's drawings and Ashley Hunt's maps, the reasons why cartography shouldn't be confused with geography, etc.
I found An Architektur's contribution to the book illuminating. Because of what i read in the media and because of the intense pleasure i experience when i am treated like a delinquent by the "immigration" officers each time my plane land in the U.S., i often have this vision that the U.S. is the evil one in the quest of security and border control. An Architektur, a collective that applies sociopolitical questions to space and architecture, proves me wrong by exposing the European Union's efforts to tighten its borders against asylum seekers and people looking for a better life. Hence, the need to close hermetically the access to EU and to park inside a migration camp anyone managing to jump above the wired fences. An Architektur points to several maps which illustrate the issue such as Migreurop' s From European Migration and Asylum Policies. to Camps for Foreigners map (PDF), - Hackitectura's map that rethinks the frontier between Morocco and Spain, replacing the concept of border as space of separation with site of connection and reciprocal flow, etc. A striking example is the article and map called Death at Europe frontiers where Olivier Clochard and Philippe Rekacewicz document the death occurred while trying to reach the territory of the European Union. Only documented death are taken into account but their number goes way beyond the 7 000 between 1993 and 2006 (3 000 from December 2003 to 2006). The map shows that danger doesn't stop when the border is crossed. Once inside the EU, migrants have to face racist attacks, unsafe working conditions for the illegals, police repression, internment camps, etc.
These were just a few lines about 4 of the maps and essays you'll find in An Atlas of Radical Cartography. There's also Pedro Lasch's beautifully symbolic map of the America/Latin America relationships, Lize Mogel's politically heavy re-lecture of the map of the San Francisco Bay Area, Jane Tsong's children science textbook-style drawings which reveal what it takes to be able to turn on the tap in her bathroom, the Center for Urban Pedagogy's well-documented New York City Garbage Machine describes the fight for power over the bins, Brooke Singer's The US Oil Fix demonstrates the impact that the US addiction to fossil fuels has on the rest of the world and Ashley Hunt's A World Map tackles the world capitalist system. An Atlas takes also the form of a touring exhibition which is making a stop over unitl May 6, 2008 at Dowd Fine Art Gallery, SUNY Cortland, NY. Related: Resistant Maps (part 1) - Introduction, Resistant Maps (part 2) - GuerrigliaMarketing. |
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Biosafe Habitat explores people’s hopes and fears related to emerging technology and our increased safety demands. Focusing on perceived domestic security in times of potential bioterrorist and chemical attacks, Marei's proposal is to use animals as biosensors, that would allow us to check if our home is really safe from external influences. The idea was inspired by miners who used to take canaries with them to monitor the air quality. When the bird died, they knew the air was toxic and they had to retreat from the mine. To protect the home from attacks on the water supply, fish as biosensors would be living in the water supply system, more precisely in a kind of aquarium located by the tap. The fish would have to be a GloFish, a brand of genetically modified zebrafish that starts fluorescing when exposed to contamination. Although not originally developed for ornamental home uses, it is the first GM animal to become publicly available (only in certain countries such as the US) as a pet. This could lead to new behaviours such as presenting your guests with a jug of water with a living fish swimming inside it as a sign that you are offering them safe water. Now how about the rest of the house? Cockroaches have hairy feet that can pick up much faster than humans the smallest traces of everything from airborne contamination to biological and chemical agents.
Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches are the prefered species. A special nesting box would have to be installed in the house as the insect require a certain amount of humidity and heat to breed and thrive. You'd just need one or two of them so it is not as if you are opening the door to an un-controllable pest. In case of suspicion, the animals can be released and their hairy feet will collect evidence of any trace of potentially harmful substance. The home owner would them catch them back (apparently the roaches find the smell of coffee irresistible) and check if the substances under their feet present traces of potentially harmful substances. More images. |
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Paul Shambroom's Security series examines issues of fear, safety and liberty in post-9/11 America.
The photographer documents training facilities, equipment and personnel involved in the government and private sector efforts to prepare for and respond to terrorist. First responders and law enforcement officers train in large-scale simulated environments such as Disaster City in Texas and Terror Town, an abandoned mining community in New Mexico. |
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The way to make firearms really safe, says Hebert Meyerle, is to password-protect the ammunition itself. The German inventor is patenting a design for a cartridge that would be fired by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. The energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated. This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad stored in the cartridge. When sold, cartridges could be programmed with a password that matches the purchaser's gun. An owner could set the gun to request the password when it is reloaded, or to perform a biometric check before firing. The gun could also automatically lock itself after a pre-set period of time has passed since the password was entered. Via new scientist. |
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Nicoline van Harskamp has done an extensive research on both public and private security guards and police forces in Amsterdam, Glasgow, Berlin, The Hague, Istanbul, London, and Rotterdam. Her project was different for each city. The Istanbul version addressed issues of (the privatisation of) street surveillance with a group photo shoot of different private guards, a video piece and a "Little Guide to Istanbul guards" booklet. In the Turkish city every street is ‘owned’ by the people that live and work there. Many Istanbulites pass the time waiting and watching. This system of urban social monitoring makes the city with 15 million people virtually street crime and vandalism free. Nevertheless, (military) police officers, municipal guards and soldiers also have a strong public presence.
An unusually high number of private security people is present around public spaces like parks and bridges. There is no formal legislation restricting the privatisation of public safety and the guards themselves have no more rights or power than any other person in the street. Her Istanbul video documented an experiment for which van Harskamp employed two men to spend 12 hours in the streets doing nothing. The team was dressed in special uniforms and wore false I.D. cards. They became traffic police on busy crossings, Zabita officers on Galata bridge, tourism police in Sultanahmet, boat attendants on the ferry, etc. and the public reacted to them accordingly. The team surprisingly easily made friends with other uniformed people. Hands were being shaken with police officers, soldiers and ‘colleagues’ from special security companies. Some of them just wanted to know how much they were earning and if they could get a job with the company.
These photographs depict the architectural/cultural dichotomy of having a 10 sq. ft structure in front of a 2000 sq. ft. mansion and where both serve the same function of a ‘house’. The men who work/live (they often work 24 hour shifts) in these casitas decorate them with photos of women (the virgin of Guadalupe and pinups) and fill them with amenities, such as radios, televisions, hot plates for cooking tortillas and, in some, even toilets. Very personal spaces placed in a public setting. |
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Fabian Winkler's PI (personal interpreters) is a set of small robotic devices, which deconstruct TV broadcasts' audio signals. The robots interpret the regular audio signal as control code and translate it into abstract rhythmic sounds. PIs can be plugged into the sound output of a TV set (via RCA cables). Using suction cups, individual modules can be attached anywhere to the surface of the TV. These modules translate the sound output from TV broadcasts into movements of mechanized parts that scratch, hit and thump on the surface of the TV set using it as a resonant body. The audience still sees the images but hears only the deconstructed sounds created by the robotic modules - vaguely reminding them of the original soundtrack but challenging them to interpret it in new ways.
Check the project at ZeroOne San Jose, this summer. For an intervention on images, and in a sousveillance/surveillance context this time, Austrian activists Quintessenz created an anonymous surveillance system that uses a face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded (via Wired).
New Scientist reported today on a video surveillance system that scrambles people's faces to protect them from unwarranted monitoring. Developed by Swiss company EMITALL Surveillance, the algorithm of the technology singles out any people in a video feed, on the basis of their movement, and disguises them digitally while leaving the rest of the scene intact (Videos 1, 2 and 3). Only those in possession of the encryption key can unlock the scrambled regions and identify the people shown on-screen.
The system can even use different encryption keys to scramble the identity of particular people under surveillance, says Touradj Ebrahimi, founder of EMITALL Surveillance (thanks Emily!)
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