Why choose a medium with such a violent history? Cartography is a powerful tool for visualising connections. Moreover, I find it compelling how reclaiming a historically oppressive practice and transforming it into an act of political resistance can be deeply subversive. What is the purpose of these types of maps? you may ask. Moses März, the artist who has inspired my work, writes in Why We Map: “On the one hand it’s about making people see through the structures that oppress them. To increase the sum of knowledge. But knowing alone won’t save us. It’s also about how it’s being mediated. For there are no new ideas, only new ways of making them felt”.

To me the visual representation of connections highlights the complex and political nature of knowledge production. The imaginaries and realities that maps are able to produce are different to the way knowledge is transmitted through academic papers and is therefore also not only accessible to other groups, but can lead to a different kinds of knowing.
I find it very powerful too that experimental cartography in itself conveys knowledge whilst at the same time being inherently critical of knowledge production itself. This is particularly evident in the works of März where his maps are        . This emphasises the subjectivity of its production, rather than as is common for the practice of cartography, trying to conceal the creator to give an impression of objectivity. Furthermore, it adds to the sense of accessibility of the practice of counter-mapping as a political act of resistance – it can be practiced with a few sheets of paper, a pencil, some information and a critical mind!

When interacting with my map, you must be aware of the subjective nature of maps. I do by no means claim that it is a representation of reality but rather of one particular reality. 

In this interplay between facts and perception, the cartographer is both witness and actor. "[...] In order to create, or, more accurately: to invent, "his worlds", he finally arrives at a subtle mixture of the world as it is, and the world he desires"1 (Rekacewicz 2006)

Rekacewicz captures how cartographers, despite their cartographic practices, are both as an observer and an active agent. The cartographer invents something and this invention is informed by the cartographer’s background and perspective. The questions I am addressing and the theoretical lens through which I am examining the material inform the formation of my map: it informs where different information is placed, what has been made big and small, what the proximity     or     

                                                                                                                                                                distance

between        information      is, which connections are made and ultimately which structures become visible. All of this is informed by my process and my map is therefore, rather than a product of reality, a mixture of how I see the world mixed with the story I am trying to tell you as the map-reader.

I invite you to be critical of my work and of your own biases.