About Radical Cartography

"Land isn't divided except in our head and on our maps." -Denis Wood, The Power of Maps

The tricky (and powerful) thing about maps is that they actually PRODUCE the things they seem to simply REPRESENT. Masquerading as fact, maps give us a "reality beyond our reach." I can change the identity of a place by renaming its landmarks, and I can gain control of my neighbors land by marking it off on a map. It seems too simple to be true, but it happened to the Native Americans and it continues to happen today across the globe.

But questioning the authority of maps and the "representations" that they produce is nothing new either. Radical cartography (also called "counter cartography" or "critical cartography") has been questioning the hegemonic effects of mapping for decades. In 1979 McArthur published his "Universal Corrective Map of the World" to protest the prejudice of North-as-up orientation. Indigenous mapping movements have sprung up as a way to reclaim the title to tribal lands using the same cartographic weapon that was used against them in the first place.

"Even though the map is not the territory, to make maps is to organize oneself, to generate new connections and to be able to transform the material and immaterial conditions in which we find ourselves immersed. It isn't the territory but it definitely produces territory." -The Car-Tac Collective

Radical cartographies tend to take what conventional maps propose and propose just the opposite. These maps are no truer than any other map, but they serve as an important reminder that a single space can be understood in infinite ways. In the quote above, the Car-Tac collective suggests that making a map does more than just make a proposition, but that it actually encourages an exploration and organization of the territory. The cartographies on this site are not quite 'radical' in their subject matters, but I hope that the careful integration of interactive technologies in each project provides a more radical way to explore and understand spaces.