Ebook: Experimental Geography

"The manifestations of 'experimental geography' (a term coined by geographer Trevor Paglen in 2002) run the gamut of contemporary art practice today: sewn cloth cities that spill out of suitcases, bus tours through water treatment centers, performers climbing up the sides of buildings, and sound works capturing the buzz of electric waves on the power grid. In the hands of contemporary artists, the study of humanity's engagement with the earth's surface becomes a riddle best solved in experimental fashion. The exhibition presents a panoptic view of this new practice, through a wide range of mediums including sound and video installations, photography, sculpture, and experimental cartography. The approaches used by the artists featured in Experimental Geography range from the poetic to the empirical. The more pragmatic techniques include those used by the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) in projects made with students and other non-art groups that aim to strengthen peoples' roles as agents of change in their own environments. See, for example, their map intended to help longshoremen and truckers identify chokepoints in the cargo trade network. In their similarly empirical projects, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a research organization, examines the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth's surface. CLUI embraces a multidisciplinary approach that forces a reading of the American landscape (such as the disfiguring effects of culling natural resources from the picturesque banks of the Hudson River), thereby refamiliarizing viewers with the overlooked details of their everyday experience."--Publisher's description.;In two directions: geography as art, art as geography / Nato Thompson -- Experimental geography: from cultural production to the production of space / Trevor Paglen -- Rich in reference: thoughts on land art's infrastructural legacy / Jeffrey Kastner -- Landscape is a metaphor / text by Matthew Coolidge ; artists : The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Francis Alÿs, Ilana Halperin, Raqs Media Collective, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne -- Research and development / text by Iain Kerr ; artists : Spurse, Multiplicity and Trevor Paglen -- We are the city / text by Damon Rich ; artists : CUP, kanarinka, Alex Villar, Deborah Stratman, e-Xplo, and Yin Xiuzhen -- Cartography / text by Lize Mogel ; artists : Lize Mogel, Ellen Rothenberg, AREA Chicago, and Daniel Tucker.;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. An artificial reef fabricated from 500 tons of industrial waste. 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 Alys, 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.