Web of Scientific Journal

The map as an element for navigation, as a guide, as an object where to visualise the ideation of territory has been key in the history of humanity. Not only as a representation of physical territories, but also of imaginary, mental and emotional ones. The map can become an artistic object in itself and artists have represented on it data, latitudes and longitudes, but also imaginary and fanciful elements. The journey, drifting, transhumance... are redefined in the age of the Internet and social networks, and space and time lose their sense of the here and now. This new AusArt monograph proposes to question the systems of representation of contemporary art linked in one way or another to the map and cartography, distancing ourselves from the presumed objectivity of the topographer, aware that these representations do not give the results we are looking for. The proposal has its origins in the project "Mekarteak, meta-cartographies of Basque art (2017 - 2021)", proposed by the consolidated research group AKMEKA, which at the time focused its attention on the systems of representation of contemporary art related to the map and the idea of cartography in relation to a very specific territory, that of Basque art.

Under this premise, this issue of AusArt works with maps of maps, maps that are not maps, maps that are texts and texts that are cartographies, maps about art or made by artists looking at their own artistic practices, maps and mappings in relation to a specific context, meta-cartographies, expanded cartographies, etc. To this end, the editorial team has selected a total of twelve contributions that address this range of possibilities, from the general to the specific.

“From the map as object to techno-phenomenological posthumanism” is the first of the texts in this volume, in which Patxi Alda Esparza analyses the development and evolution of mapping and territorial representation technologies that run parallel to the evolution of human beings themselves. From this premise, he sets out to understand the close relationship between technology and people. Taking the representation, transformation and construction of the reality of the world, accelerated by digital technology, as the basis of his argument, he proposes a journey from what he calls the map-object to the technological experimentation of the territory. The text “Graphic representations in the 21st Century society” develops along similar lines. Starting from the immediate access to the infinite interconnected databases, María José Gutiérrez González compiles in her article some cartographic samples built with multimedia material constructed from personal narratives, as well as other types of narrative cartographies dependent on a basic geographical map.

From largest to smallest scale, Ventura Alejandro Pérez Suárez structures his proposal for a “Seven spaces map”, organised as a space for the Sky, another for the Countryside, another for Cities, another for Houses, for Bodies, for Things and for Sketches, respectively. A stratification that allows us to formulate a discourse on the ways of situating and relating different sculptural and architectural proposals from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. Assuming the complex world without distances established by the new 'spaces' of the 21st century in which we live, Ricardo González García in “(Mis)oriented in the plasticity of a map without distances: rhizome, palimpsests, drifts and (im)possible cartography of contemporary art” proposes an approach to establish certain conceptual bases for the generation of a possible cartography of contemporary art. With this aim in mind, and taking into account the technological determination of the digital metamedium in contemporary modes of communication and production, it addresses fundamentals such as the concept of 'rhizome', that of 'palimpsest' or the theory of drift in order to serve as support for the plastic diagrammatic configuration of tautological maps of contemporary art.

On the other hand, from the analysis of the map and cartography in contemporary artistic practices and its inevitable link with the use of technology by María Dolores Gallego Martínez, we move on to its use in specific areas, both in the specific field of art and in practices that derive from it. “Artistic cartography as a visual medium of reflection to understand the reality” focuses on the research and creation of artistic cartographies as a therapeutic process and as a means of visual communication, but also as an effective educational methodology for reflecting on and understanding reality, both individual and collective. To this end, she uses a series of references that help us to understand and learn the symbolic connotations of maps.

In another line of work, painting also serves as a transversal tool to analyse some of the most relevant ways in which art is mapping the mutations of information and communication technologies that interfere in the dimension and meaning of landscape. Alba Cortés García and Carmen Andreu Lara present “Combing reality against the grain: Painting as a map and reflection of an epoch”, in a context in which the need to map emotional territories, based on the subjectivity of our experience of the landscape, is generating the creation of new cartographic proposals by artists.

” The challenge of sound conservation: Musical notation and recordings”, proposed by Igor Saenz Abarzuza, takes music as a cartographic and motivational element to carry out a reflexive analysis of notation and recordings. To do so, he carries out a historical review that concludes in a post-digital era located in the Basque Country. In this journey from the concrete, sound is consolidated as a thematic element linked to the idea of the map. Also close to the ground, but in a different context, in “Stony memory: Sound cartographies from the soundscapes recorded on old slate slabs in the Catalan Pyrenees”, the artist Ferrán Lega Lladós also starts from a research that deals with the creation of a sound art project based on the sound cartographies recorded by contact microphones placed on old slate slabs, carved by hand, from the roofs of the roofs of a village in the Catalan Pyrenees. His proposal proposes, from the perspective of the soundscape, an idea of a map linked to an artistic project.

In “Emotional atlas of Bidasoa” proposed by Helga Massetani Piemonte, cartography is presented as a process, as a graphic representation of a project or as a piece of art elaborated through scientific processes and artistic reflections. The article offers a journey from the conception of the project idea, the elaboration of the object of study, its methodology and its artistic process, culminating in metamorphosis as a dynamic to embrace discourses from different perspectives. At a short geographical distance from the latter, it is the idea of the route that becomes cartography in “Cartography of Chillida-Leku: Sculpture as a path” when Carolina Valls Juan explores the possible routes that are projected through a landscape designed over time, and which are developed in a space, highlighting the importance of the place (the "topos") as something physical, but also as something psychic and spiritual. To this end, he resorts to a method of observation and cataloguing in order to review the itinerary of the sculptures on display and thus arouse curiosity to embark on this enriching journey.

Once again the route, but also the drift or the analysis of the artistic map made from artistic practices are the object of study for Mónica Sánchez Tierraseca, who in her text “Re-enacting Golgonooza: Contemporary representations of William Blake's mythical city” approaches the visual imaginary of the English poet and engraver by Andrea McLean and Henry Eliot. It thus allows us to move through a dynamic terrain with a multitude of complex, intermingled and interconnected layers. We find ourselves in the midst of the London topography in which symbolic elements are distributed, which, in turn, represent imaginary regions. Artistic cartography in this case becomes a tool close to understanding the mythical universe of William Blake and his archetypal city.

Among the infinite possibilities of the map, it can also be a tool that reflects the past, but also a device for returning by a different route to that lived time with the ability to read it from another perspective. In “A walk through the materials accumulated at the edges of history based on the exhibition ‘Denboraren tolesak’”, as the closing of this AusArt monograph, the researcher Elena Olave Duñabeitia reflects on the importance of contemporary artistic practices in the reinterpretation of history and the reconfiguration of the present based on a recent exhibition by the artist Iván Gómez, where the show is a curatorial exercise that functions as a map.

Once again, we would like to highlight the quality of the selection of texts received and which make up this volume, with the invaluable collaboration of the AusArt editorial team. The variety of approaches and readings around the idea of cartography draw a complex and diverse conceptual scenario that paradoxically has not only revolved around the concept of territory, in any of its possibilities and potencies, but several of the contributions have coincided in a look at border issues, perhaps pointing to new themes to be dealt with in this journal.

Finally, we have approached the visual as another way of approaching the contents which, on the other hand, is as typical of research into art and its dissemination as text can be, but which finds it difficult to fit into this type of publication, beyond its role as an illustration or complement to the text. Aware that the image is also part of our language and constitutes an autonomous tool for research and reflection, even with essayistic and discursive potential, we have approached the cover as another contribution, in this case a visual one. And we have done so with “Cartografía del espacio de posibilidad” by Ramón Salas, where text and image make up a conceptual map that also accompanies us throughout the pages of the publication.

Arantza Lauzirika Morea

Natxo Rodríguez Arkaute

Monographic issue coordinators