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Cartographic Abstraction: Mapping Practices in Contemporary Art

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Cartographic Abstraction: Mapping Practices in Contemporary Art Cartographic Abstraction: Mapping Practices in Contemporary Art Claire Reddleman Goldsmiths, University of London Ph.D. I confirm that this work is my own. Claire Reddleman 2 Acknowledgments My thanks go first and foremost to those who have supervised me over the course of this project: Alberto Toscano, Susan Schuppli and John Hutnyk. At Goldsmiths, I also thank Mary Claire Halvorson, John Levett, Luciana Parisi, Anisha Ahmed, Ian Tucknott, Simon Barber, Tiffany Page, Philipp Jeandree and Aya Hino. My thanks also to Layla Curtis for assisting me with images and references. I would also like to thank those who have been in various reading groups with me, who have challenged and supported me, and shaped my thinking, as well as those who have taught me in various capacities during my time at Goldsmiths. Particular thanks go to Joel Winder, Lucy Bond, Chris Jude, Ben Mackay, and, above all, Edward Mackay. 3 Abstract This thesis proposes a theory of cartographic abstraction as a framework for investigating cartographic viewing, and does so through engaging with a series of contemporary artworks concerned with cartographic ‘ways of seeing’ (Berger 1972). Cartographic abstraction is a material modality of thought and experience that is produced through cartographic techniques of depiction. It is the more-than-visual register that posits and produces the ‘cartographic world’, or what John Pickles has called the ‘geo-coded world’ (2006). By this I mean the naturalized apprehension of the earth as a homogeneous space that is naturally, even necessarily, understood as regular, consistent and objective. I argue for identifying cartographic techniques of depiction as themselves abstract, and cartographic abstraction as such as the modality of thought and experience that these techniques produce. Abstraction within capitalism comes to be socially real and material, taking place outside thought. I propose a series of viewpoints, that are posited by the relations of viewing enacted by the selected artworks themselves. I analyse these viewpoints in relation to modes of cartographic viewing offered by theorists. Through close readings of cartographic artworks, I expand the current possibilities for understanding cartographic abstraction and its effects, through proposing a range of viewpoints that are both deployed in, and themselves problematize, cartographic viewing. I connect cartographic abstraction to debates about abstraction in Marxist and materialist approaches to philosophy, arguing for interpreting cartographic viewing as an abstract practice through which subjects are positioned and structured in relation to the ‘viewed’. This study discerns ‘real abstraction’ functioning in a particular area of ‘the operations of capitalism’; that is, modes of visual, and epistemological, abstraction that we can identify by exploring artworks concerned with cartographic depiction and conceptualisation. This approach to abstraction explores how cartographic knowledge can be theorized through recognising cartographic abstraction as a material 4 modality of thought and experience. 5 Contents Introduction - Cartographic Abstraction: Mapping Practices in Contemporary Art 9 Chapter One - Cartographic viewing as cartographic abstraction: literature on mapping, visuality and abstraction 32 Chapter Two - Apollonian Viewing: turning the planetary view inside out in Targets by Joyce Kozloff 79 Chapter Three - Re-visualizing the drone’s eye view: networked vision and visibility in works by James Bridle and Trevor Paglen 119 Chapter Four - Remote viewing and cartographic abstraction: the antipodes in three artworks by Layla Curtis 167 Chapter Five - Cartographic signification and soundscape: Bill Fontana’s River Sounding 208 Chapter Six - From the zenithal gaze to cartographic synoptic viewing: Layla Curtis’s cartographic collage The Thames 247 Chapter Seven - Towards cartographic abstraction: a material modality of thought and experience 295 References 6 List of Figures Fig. 1. Targets (2000), interior view 82 Fig. 2. Targets on display at the Venice Arsenale, exterior view 82 Fig. 3. Targets, exterior view 83 Fig. 4. Targets, interior view with door 84 Fig. 5. Detail of Targets as reproduced photographically in Joyce Kozloff: Co+Ordinates 93 Fig. 6. Screenview of Google Maps, ‘Mata Khan’, April 2015 94 Fig. 7. Satellite view of Google Maps, ‘Mata Khan’, April 2015 95 Fig. 8. Route between Mata Khan and Soltani, screenview, July 2014 96 Fig. 9. Route between Mata Khan and Soltani, screenview, April 2015 96 Fig. 10. Screenview of Google Maps, ‘Bay of Pigs’ 97 Fig. 11. Installation view of Drone Shadow 003 (2011) 120 Fig. 12. Website view of Drone Shadow 005 (2013) 125 Fig. 13. Untitled (Reaper Drone) (2010) 128 Fig. 14. Untitled (Reaper Drone) (2010) 129 Fig. 15. Untitled (Reaper Drone) (2010) 131 Fig. 16. Cover image for Message in a Bottle project website 169 Fig. 17. Screengrab of Message in a Bottle website homepage 170 Fig. 18. Screengrab of ‘Research and Development’ page of project website 171 Fig. 19. GPS drawing showing Kent coast and the North Sea, from project website 172 Fig. 20. First image in website presentation of 78 Degrees North, 67 Degrees South, laylacurtis.com 173 Fig. 21. Second image in website presentation of 78 Degrees North, 67 Degrees South, laylacurtis.com 173 Fig. 22. Third image in website presentation of 78 Degrees North, 67 Degrees South, laylacurtis.com 174 Fig. 23. Doubled map projection, antipodes.uk.com 177 Fig. 24. Gallery view of gridded pairs of photographs 177 Fig. 25. Gallery view of Antipodes 179 Fig. 26. Gallery view of Antipodes 179 Fig. 27. Detail of paired images, Volcan Tungurahua, Ecuador – Gunung Sinabung, Indonesia 182 Fig. 28. Online view of Puerto de Tapia de Casariego, Spain, and Port of Christchurch, New Zealand 197 Fig. 29. Handout map – ‘The River Sounding Journey’ – side 1 209 Fig. 30. Handout map, side 2 210 Fig. 31. Map of recording locations in River Sounding exhibition catalogue 210 Fig. 32. Photograph of steps between mezzanine and lower levels of the light wells, Somerset House 211 7 Fig. 33. View along mezzanine level and down to lower level of light wells, Somerset House 211 Fig. 34. View from mezzanine level of part of the system of speakers, Somerset House 212 Fig. 35. View of lowest level of lightwells with exhibition signage, Somerset House. The entrance to Coal Hole 1 is at the right 213 Fig. 36. Photograph of video projection onto brick wall of coal hole 1b, seen through gap in wall of coal hole 1a (see handout map) 215 Fig. 37. Photograph of coal hole 3, showing video projection of cables on Millennium Bridge onto brick wall and pipe 215 Fig. 38. Photograph of video projection onto stone slabs 216 Fig. 39. View into coal hole 216 Fig. 40. View into the Dead House, towards video projection of Tower Bridge 217 Fig. 41. Photograph of coal hole video projection (marked ‘5’ on handout map) showing Thames Estuary whistle buoy 218 Fig. 42. Promotional poster for River Sounding 227 Fig. 43. Globe Tracing IV (2001) 250 Fig. 44. The Thames (Section 1: From London Bridge, Arizona to Salt Island, British Virgin Islands) by Layla Curtis (2013) 254 Fig. 45. Detail of The Thames (Section 1: From London Bridge, Arizona to Salt Island, British Virgin Islands 257 Fig. 46. The Thames (Section 2: From Sugar Island, Maine to Cut n Shoot, Texas) 259 Fig. 47. The Thames (Section 10: From Cape Verde Islands to Thames, New Zealand) 264 Fig. 48. A plan of Imola (1502), Leonardo da Vinci 272 8 Introduction Cartographic Abstraction: Mapping Practices in Contemporary Art In this study, I bring together close readings of contemporary artworks with materialist approaches to abstraction. This is an interdisciplinary investigation concerned with enlarging the current possibilities for critically understanding viewing and subjectivity in the area of cartographic imagery. I aim to push beyond the highly productive framework of critical cartography, to articulate a new approach to understanding cartography’s effects in the world. In order to do this, the new theoretical proposal that I put forward and use throughout this study is 'cartographic abstraction'. Cartographic abstraction is a material modality of thought and experience that is produced through techniques of cartographic depiction. It is the more-than-visual register that both posits and produces the ‘cartographic world’, or what John Pickles has called the ‘geo-coded world’ (2006). By this I mean the naturalized apprehension of the earth as a homogeneous space that is naturally, even necessarily, understood as regular, consistent and objective. I argue for identifying cartographic techniques of depiction as themselves abstract, and cartographic abstraction as such as the modality of thought and experience that these techniques produce. While many critics have noted and discussed abstract processes as central to the making of cartographic imagery, particularly projection, symbolisation, scale, and generalisation (Monmonier 1996, Jacob 2006, Wood 2008, 2010), I build on these insights to put forward a theory of cartographic abstraction, particularly concerned with cartographic viewing. By cartographic viewing, I mean the encultured practice of apprehending the world through the reading, viewing, and interpreting of cartographic imagery; principally ‘the map’, but also images, and especially artistic 9 images, that use or engage with cartographic techniques. I therefore refer to ‘the cartographic image’ throughout this study, in preference to ‘the map’, in order
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