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1. Images which are called up from the word „map”:
Maps of oil wars of water of bio-diversity of military posts
of Riachuelo/borders /capital cities
linguistic maps
about socio-economic distribution
about work/unemployment
Maps of areas with various scales
With informative titles
Maps without spatial dimensions
Maps of relations
Weather maps
Maps of totalitarianism
Maps of slavery
Maps of liberty
maps of desire
maps of oppression
maps of the body and of bodies
Maps of a situation
still or dynamic maps
Many possible maps, many possible forms of convergence
Search: from the action, towards the action.
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2. Making maps is an action of recognition: it can expand knowledge, be a tool for appropriation and control, a denunciation, a plan to sabotage, a form of concealment, and more.
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3. On CNN, a reporter shows us a map of Iraq- in the same manner with which he would show a weather map. It is overloaded with digital technology, as though it were on a table. The map has colours and reliefs which differentiate the moist areas from the desert zones.
Arranged around the map are the latest offers in military technology, aiming at Baghdad: tanks, missiles and planes which are placed without any relation to the scale of the map. We look for the direct seller on television, who presented the objects with his ball point pen, and placed prices on them. Suddenly, arrows as thick and straight as alleys link the weapons with Baghdad: the coalition’s front edges forward. It looks like a fast and safe game..
On the map, everything appears that is necessary for a victory.
Of course there is no sign of the Iraqi population. A problem with the scale?
If that was the case, then the super-weapons wouldn’t be visible either.
Even the villages and towns aren’t shown,
just the stadium and the goal lines.
A map of concealment, to stay sitting
Blind and blinding cartography, made by satellites whose eyes are rented from the Pentagon
Accompanied by static, extended images of the landscape,
seen from a hotel window in Baghdad.
The nothing which conceals everything.
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Map of Riachuelo [1]
The hidden border
The national sewer
The border itself is not a dividing line without any dimensions
But a place which deserves its own cartography.
Of various stories which mix there
chemical, biological, socio-economic
Of huge factories which were bombed with oil dollars
Of ships which have been rusting for decades
Of bacteria which creates bubbles on the surface of the water
Of old and new slums with a view of, and able to smell the river
(Map of neglect)
of bridges, where the police and the Piqueteros [2]
and the car-driving citizens fight
(maps of struggle and oppression)
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Here’s where mass murders live
Maps of Buenos Aires and La Plata
With the addresses of the marked mass murderers
maps which are made for the Escrache [3]
Of many
years ago
Denunciation maps which are a call to action
To change the behaviour of the neighbours
To change the space-The marked ones’ sense of reality
Maps which are glued on the memorial marches on the 24th
In the streets which are included in the remembrance
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Maps of evacuation/cartography of control
(to re evacuate)
Cartography which doesn’t want to be a bi-dimensional presentation
But a multidimensional knowledge in movement
built on a situation between two groups
who are huddled in the disguise of others:
Agents of the ministry for control
on a scale of 1:1 Action in a defined area, which changes through intervention And action over those who suddenly break out The design denounced though confusion and irony
Action about our selves
Notes [1] The Riachuelo divides the Province of Buenos Aires from the capital city. It is one of the most polluted rivers in South America and flows through an area of slums and industrial waste lands. [2] Escraches are demonstrations against former members or collaborators with the military junta in Argentina, who escaped without punishment or received an amnesty. The demonstrations (usually with the neighbours) move to the house of the affected person and mark it with bags of colour. these, and the social demarcation of the previously unseen criminals are called Escrache. [3] often, organised groups of unemployed people, the Piqueteros, block the streets and motorways in Argentina. This way they make their demands heard about money, recognition of their movement, and try to carry out dignified work.
