core.recommendations:Experimental Geography

Feb 1, 2009

core.recommendations:Experimental Geography

A photo of a secret CIA prison. A map designed to help visitors reach Malibu’s notoriously inaccessible public beaches. Guidebooks to factories, prisons, and power plants in upstate New York. These are some of the more than one hundred projects represented in Experimental Geography, a groundbreaking collection of visual research and mapmaking from the past ten years.

Experimental Geography explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether). This lavishly illustrated book features more than a dozen maps; artwork by Francis Alÿs, Alex Villar, and Yin Xiuzhen; and recent projects by The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Raqs Media Collective, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

The collection is framed by essays by bestselling author Trevor Paglen, Jeffrey Kastner, and editor Nato Thompson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NATO THOMPSON is a writer and curator at Creative Time, one of New York’s most prestigious art organizations. He is the editor of The Interventionists: A Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, a survey of political art of the 1990s, and Ahistoric Occasion: Artists Making History. He recently produced Paul Chan’s acclaimed “Waiting for Godot in New Orleans,” which included free public performances of Samuel Beckett’s play, theater workshops, educational seminars, and more.

PRESS AND REVIEWS

“Living in cities, we need a new way to think about how we move and what we notice… This strange, exciting book offers just that—a new way to notice public space. It is the brainchild of Nato Thompson: the results of his fascinations with urban planning post-Katrina, abandoned or unnoticed urban landscapes and public art.”

—Susan Salter Reynold, Los Angeles Times Link

“Another step in the ongoing quest for social energies not yet recognized as art, Experimental Geography brings together a significant group of artists and collectives looking seriously at land use—urban and rural, local and global. Leaving behind the earthworks of the past, and reviving the line-blurring process that defined art and lived experience in 1960s conceptualism, much of this work is not about geography but exist within geography, exploring the politics and infrastructures that can either change or stall the world.”

—Lucy Lippard, author of The Lure of the Local

PLEASE NOTE: By using the link below to purchase the book a portion of the proceeds will come back to core.form-ula, thus allowing us to provide a larger library of original content. We thank you in advance for your support.

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