Cartographers: A practice based investigation on memory, conflict and the aerial image.
type: CreativeWork
description: The power of the relationship between the photographic apparatus and migration is situated at a metaphorical crosslink between the two-dimensional outcome of marking borders on a map, or printing an image on a flat surface, and the time that affects the events that shape the very heart of that crosslink. The rigidity of borders, and sometimes their false ideas of flexibility can be seen on how recently Europe has proved (again) that ‘open boundaries’ is a non specific inclusive idea. The experience of migrants going through conflict situations is representative of the relationship between the ‘having to deal with’ the happenings, in most cases forced, and at the same time changing, transforming the landscape, leaving or bringing old and new values. Therefore the democratic power in this work is intended as the collective recognition of the importance of simple acts of looking, bringing values to the transformative nature of human beings. Because of its mechanical nature and the stillness of the images it produces, photography has the capacity to show transformation, with the quality of its materiality, which continuously challenges the users of photography in accessing different formats, since its invention. In the context of this work (Cartographers), photography becomes an inspiration for the concept, planning and making of the film process. Film can embrace elements that photography doesn’t have, like sound and duration, added to landscape and to portraits. These elements may help the viewer to understand a narrative that grows from a single trunk, the film, whose roots are holding onto the lightness of the sky instead of the thickness of the ground by representing, filmically, the expressions of the people who speak about their experiences. The ‘democratization of cartography’ – is in this written text considered as a shift of attention from the act of cartography to who makes it, the cartographers. Therefore map-making does not function as a merely two-dimensio…
abstract: The power of the relationship between the photographic apparatus and migration is situated at a metaphorical crosslink between the two-dimensional outcome of marking borders on a map, or printing an image on a flat surface, and the time that affects the events that shape the very heart of that crosslink. The rigidity of borders, and sometimes their false ideas of flexibility can be seen on how recently Europe has proved (again) that ‘open boundaries’ is a non specific inclusive idea. The experience of migrants going through conflict situations is representative of the relationship between the ‘having to deal with’ the happenings, in most cases forced, and at the same time changing, transforming the landscape, leaving or bringing old and new values. Therefore the democratic power in this work is intended as the collective recognition of the importance of simple acts of looking, bringing values to the transformative nature of human beings. Because of its mechanical nature and the stillness of the images it produces, photography has the capacity to show transformation, with the quality of its materiality, which continuously challenges the users of photography in accessing different formats, since its invention. In the context of this work (Cartographers), photography becomes an inspiration for the concept, planning and making of the film process. Film can embrace elements that photography doesn’t have, like sound and duration, added to landscape and to portraits. These elements may help the viewer to understand a narrative that grows from a single trunk, the film, whose roots are holding onto the lightness of the sky instead of the thickness of the ground by representing, filmically, the expressions of the people who speak about their experiences. The ‘democratization of cartography’ – is in this written text considered as a shift of attention from the act of cartography to who makes it, the cartographers. Therefore map-making does not function as a merely two-dimensio…
author: Bonizzi, Valentina
language: eng
keywords: Aerial image, Cartography, Conflict, Migration, Archive, Film making, Time, Borders, Art, Methodology
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:08:19Z
provider: University of Dundee
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Dundee