Event overview
The Radical Media Forum of the Department of Media & Communications presents:
"(Re)Making Maps in a Time of Cultural & Techno-Political Upheaval" by Philippe Rekacewicz - Tuesday, March 13, 6:00 in Screen 1, MRB (Media Research Building).
In this talk Philippe Rekacewicz, Head Geographer and Cartographer from the influential monthly Le Monde diplomatique, looks at the intellectual, political, and practical challenges of producing a world atlas in the volatile geopolitical and cultural climate of the past year. As maps go digital, digital power relations shape cyberspace and ‘real life’, cartographic representations of our world are facing new challenges. Rekacewicz will illustrate the art and politics of cartography in light of his team’s experience in putting together Le Monde diplomatique’s 2012 World Atlas. For instance; how to depict a rapidly changing world that includes a major financial crisis threatening the collapse of the Eurozone, represent equally rapid changes in technological means to accumulate and store all sorts of data (almost too much for us to absorb), convey the breadth and depth of recent revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. Using a combination of recent maps (conventional, digital, and ‘radical’ techniques) and hands-on experience this talk raises important issues for students and commentators engaging questions relevant to theory and research into the contemporary cultural and sociopolitical world. Like cartographers scholars and practitioners are dealing with how any graphic depiction of future trends are saturated with those of the past and the present. How we see and present the world recomposes and decomposes according to the opportunities and limits of digital mapping techniques, mapping devices, location and movement in online worlds and on the ground.
Biography:
With dual French and US citizenship, Philippe Rekacewicz is a geographer, cartographer and journalist. On completing his studies in Geography at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, he took up a post in 1988 with the international monthly Le Monde Diplomatique in Paris (70 editions in more than 30 languages), where he is currently Head of Cartographic Productions. Rekacewicz has taught at the University of Bologna (Italy) in the Department of History and Geography (2006-2009). From 1996 to 2006 he also headed the cartographic unit at the United Nations Environment Program in Norway (UNEP/GRID-Arendal).
His areas of specific interest are demography, refugees, migration, and stateless persons; broader areas of interest include geopolitics, sociocultural territories, public and private space. In his work he brings together issues of concern shared by cartography, art, and politics; e.g. how communities, political actors, and economic agencies produce their own cartographic visions; how actors can manipulate and lie through maps. Since 1988 Rekacewicz has published more than 2000 original thematic maps, 15 atlases, many articles on cartographic visions of the world, and contributed to exhibitions on cartography and art. (See: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/)
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Mar 2012 | 6:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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