Maps, mapping, borders – the world has been defined by these cultural constructs at every level. HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel), a centre in Switzerland dealing with contemporary art with a focus on technology, is devoting an exhibition to these themes. Through technology the exhibition “explores forms of map representation as a tool operating between knowledge and technology”. The exhibition brings together artists whose work has confronted the digital and the range of tools and distribution spaces that have allowed them to create alternative mappings to those already existing, including realities that have seldom been studied because less relevant politically. Artists have often participated in this type of work with a new discipline emerging from this counter-culture, neo-geography.
Digital Atmosphere by Studio Above & Below, created following a conversation with scientists from King’s College (London), generates climate mapping by visualising pollution in real time using augmented reality.
In the work of Tega Brain (Austria), Julian Oliver (New Zealand) & Bengt Sjölén (Sweden), the neutrality and accuracy of calculation systems for possible preventive actions used to solve the climate crisis is challenged. In their work Asunder (2019), predictions calculated by a super-intelligence are totally improbable. James Bridle explores the history of radar technology and its developments by intersecting the history of surveillance with that of bird migration observation, with reference to the Tour du Balat database.
Satellites floating above our heads, above the atmosphere, silently contribute to a representations of the world and what happens in it using forms and data that greatly influence our lives, both individually and collectively. Using 24 neon lights and data taken from weather stations and satellite maps in real time, the architecture and research studio “fabric” simulates the light monitored by an imaginary weather satellite (Satellite Daylight, 47°33’N, 2020) over the latitude of Basel at a speed of 7,541m/s.
Using play as the optimal system of immersion and experience, Fei Jun with Interesting World Installation 1 (2019) and the duo Total Refusal with (Operation Jane Walk, 2018) each provide, from a different perspective, experiential evidence that every representation of the world is the result of negotiation, a long way from being what we arbitrarily define as “objective”.
Trevor Paglen has always focused on everything that is hidden from our knowledge, from orbiting satellites to internet cables in the depths of the ocean that enable data to flow from one continent to another. The exhibition presents a 2015 work (Circles) that turns its attention to the surveillance system by filming the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in England with a drone.
We remain in the field of satellite orbit with The Mailman’s Bag (2015) by Esther Polak & Ivar Van Bekkum (the Netherlands), a Google Street View and Google Earth video shot using geo-localisation systems combined with an audio recording inserted into the bag of a postman, who is an accomplice in the operation. In addition, Supraspectives (2020) by Quadrature traces the trajectories of 590 spy satellites, some of which are no longer functioning.
Satellite information later materialises in Primal Tourism (2016) by Jakob Kudsk Steensen (Denmark), a virtual scale replica of the island of Borabora in French Polynesia. For 3D reproduction with Unreal Engine, the satellite information was once again reunited with other sources – plans, satellite images, tourists’ photographs, images from scientific journals and drawings telling the story.
If there is something unreal, sometimes even surreal in the making of maps, which we consider to be objective, it could be just as important to redirect our gaze to the ground to focus, through reproduction, on corners of nature threatened by economic interests, such as those of the Bialowieza Forest in Poland, reproduced through photogrammetry and digital reproduction by the two artists Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács. Fields of investigation also include economic interests revolving round speculative practices linked to the search for asteroids revealed by the Bureau d’Etudes duo, who have been interested in uncovering submerged realities in the social-political framework since 2000.
Old and new boundaries overlap with those materialised by data and their trajectories. They all contribute to constructing our worlds, making them “objective” from our point of view. They are, however, all equally invisible until they are “visualised” and sanctioned by information, whether scientific or not.
Shaping the Invisible World, curated by Boris Magrini, Christine Schran, HeK – Basel, 03.03 – 23.05.2021, please visit here the website
images: (cover 1 ) Studio Above&Below, Digital Atmosphere, 2020, Installation view, «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof (2) Tega Brain, Julian Oliver and Bengt Sjölén, Asunder, 2019, installation viewl, «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof (3) James Bridle, Catch and Release, 2018, installation view, «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof (4) Fei Jun, Interesting World installation1, 2019, installation detail, «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof (5) Trevor Paglen, Circles, 2015, installation view, «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof (6) Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Primal Tourism, 2016-2020, installation view, «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof (7) Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács, Forest on Location, 2020 and Shvayg Mayn Harts, 2018, installation view «Shaping the Invisible World – Digital Cartography as an Instrument of Knowledge», 2021, HeK (House of electronic Arts Basel), Photo: Franz Wamhof
