Re-Spatialising Possible Worlds: Countermappings, Counternarratives and Dream Geographies in the Archipelago
19 September 2018, 2:30 - 4 PM
Palma Hall Room 207
Featuring Asst. Prof. Joseph Palis, Department of Geography
The lecture is organized by the UP Diliman Discourse Studies Group and the Office of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, CSSP, UPD.
In 2010 Denis Wood argued: “…[A]mong counter-mapping strategies, none mounts the assault on the prerogatives of professional mapmakers that map art does, art … made as, with, or about maps (2010, 189; emphasis in original). This presentation discusses processual practices of countermapping in the Philippines: art maps which are reconfigurations and re-assemblies of ‘official’ maps and whose creation and authentication were legitimized by hegemonic state power to represent the modern nation-state. In the case of Filipino artist Cian Dayrit’s countermapped art works, these are interventions that interrogate the role of state power in standardizing and legitimizing a specific and particular brand of nationalism. Dayrit’s cartographically-informed art incorporates maps that destabilize the emblem of imperial and colonial power. Likewise, the art works of Mark Salvatus and Mideo Cruz embody the emotional and affective geographies of urban subalterns who navigate the labyrinth of institutionally and discursively violent terrains of Metro Manila. The maps provide an alternative representation of geoaffective dislocations and institutionalized marginalization due spatial elitism. I argue that these cartographic efforts and interventionist art maps assist in destabilizing commonly-held cartographic imaginations that were shaped and reinforced by normalized state violence abetted by vestiges of colonial legacies in the Philippines.
ABSTRACT
In 2010 Denis Wood argued: “…[A]mong counter-mapping strategies, none mounts the assault on the prerogatives of professional mapmakers that map art does, art … made as, with, or about maps (2010, 189; emphasis in original). This presentation discusses processual practices of countermapping in the Philippines: art maps which are reconfigurations and re-assemblies of ‘official’ maps and whose creation and authentication were legitimized by hegemonic state power to represent the modern nation-state. In the case of Filipino artist Cian Dayrit’s countermapped art works, these are interventions that interrogate the role of state power in standardizing and legitimizing a specific and particular brand of nationalism. Dayrit’s cartographically-informed art incorporates maps that destabilize the emblem of imperial and colonial power. Likewise, the art works of Mark Salvatus and Mideo Cruz embody the emotional and affective geographies of urban subalterns who navigate the labyrinth of institutionally and discursively violent terrains of Metro Manila. The maps provide an alternative representation of geoaffective dislocations and institutionalized marginalization due spatial elitism. I argue that these cartographic efforts and interventionist art maps assist in destabilizing commonly-held cartographic imaginations that were shaped and reinforced by normalized state violence abetted by vestiges of colonial legacies in the Philippines.
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