Today in class we had the pleasure of welcoming Alexis
Bhagat to show and discuss the revolutionary, eye-popping, and socially
conscious maps from his book, An Atlas of Radical Cartography. He
chose the word “radical”, he said, because the maps are meant to provoke new
understanding of the world and “radical” provided a larger umbrella than some
of his other choices. Among these was a map of the Routes of Least Surveillance
created for Manhattan after 9/11.
It denoted surveillance cameras with red dots and mapped routes for
several characters wishing to elude the eye of Big Brother. Alexis also showed us a mash-up map
done by his colleague Lize Mogel that melded the forms of San Francisco, the
Panama Canal, and the Northwest Passage to show the interdependency of these
areas with regard to trade and prosperity. In the atlas is a U.S.-centric map of the sources of
America’s oil consumption. Because
all the arrows of the map point to an outline of the United States at the
center of the map, it does not share any information about oil trade as a
global system. Another image of
North and South America labeled “Latino/a America” was given to people crossing
the U.S./Mexico border. It is now
displayed in the atlas including the coffee marks, folds, and dirt of their
travels. Not only is this map a
spiritual reminder of a world without borders it is also a record of their
journey.
When asked where he (or one) would draw the line between a map and a diagram, he replied, “I hate that question”. Like Bob Stein said at our visit to The Future of the Book, Alexis believes that the future of the map is something that we will not be able to recognize.
Casey Wolf
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