EEIG Sessions at NAEA 2024
Minneapolis, MN
Inefficient Mappings of Minneapolis
Linda Knight’s motivation for creating a sensory and affective form of mapping was to disrupt the Western settler colonial tradition of organizing land into “readable property, ownership, and an economic commodity” (p. 19). With critical mapping, she brought speculative and immanent theories into view by visually tracing affects and sensations in phenomena. Knight proposes that critical mapping is a form of methodological experimentation that opens possibilities of thinking through partiality and inefficiency. These innovations in mapping have challenged dominant ideas and systems, especially the damage that settler colonialism has inflicted on people, land, and nature.
The cartographer of critical mapping notices complex aspects of the world not considered in Western cartography, such as movement, light, and time. Rethinking mapping in this way shifts our human exceptionality toward a posthuman worldview about space, nature, and the more than human world. Critical mapping shifts the purpose from a faithful rendering and recording of space to the act of mapping with gestural movements and markings that describe matter in space: Movements such as sounds, smells, and histories of a place that cannot be visualized in a traditional representational way.
The EEIG interest group invites you to create and submit your own inefficient maps before or during the 2024 convention. Being in new spaces, new cities, and places inspires us to imagine how we might bring new experiences and impressions to mapping. While Minneapolis is renowned for its urban planning, so that no resident is farther than six blocks from one of the 180 city parks (Parks, n.d.), how can experiences with nature emerge in various spaces and places outside and between designated parks? Furthermore, how can these experiences with nature be expressed through inefficient mapping and what new insights might emerge?
NAEA 2024 attendees in person can use their own materials or visit the EEIG table located within the larger Interest Group table section created by the NAEA to pick up paper and pencils. The EEIG table at NAEA will also serve as an inefficient mapping art drop off point for members who would like to donate their physical maps to be scanned and published on the official EEIG website. Members who would like to keep their inefficient mappings and still get their work displayed online can document their inefficient mapping work with high quality photos and email them to the official EEIG email: [email protected].
NAEA members attending virtually are also encouraged to create inefficient mappings from their respective locations using the materials available to them. The completed inefficient mapping can then be photographed and emailed to [email protected] for inclusion on the official EEIG website.
The cartographer of critical mapping notices complex aspects of the world not considered in Western cartography, such as movement, light, and time. Rethinking mapping in this way shifts our human exceptionality toward a posthuman worldview about space, nature, and the more than human world. Critical mapping shifts the purpose from a faithful rendering and recording of space to the act of mapping with gestural movements and markings that describe matter in space: Movements such as sounds, smells, and histories of a place that cannot be visualized in a traditional representational way.
The EEIG interest group invites you to create and submit your own inefficient maps before or during the 2024 convention. Being in new spaces, new cities, and places inspires us to imagine how we might bring new experiences and impressions to mapping. While Minneapolis is renowned for its urban planning, so that no resident is farther than six blocks from one of the 180 city parks (Parks, n.d.), how can experiences with nature emerge in various spaces and places outside and between designated parks? Furthermore, how can these experiences with nature be expressed through inefficient mapping and what new insights might emerge?
NAEA 2024 attendees in person can use their own materials or visit the EEIG table located within the larger Interest Group table section created by the NAEA to pick up paper and pencils. The EEIG table at NAEA will also serve as an inefficient mapping art drop off point for members who would like to donate their physical maps to be scanned and published on the official EEIG website. Members who would like to keep their inefficient mappings and still get their work displayed online can document their inefficient mapping work with high quality photos and email them to the official EEIG email: [email protected].
NAEA members attending virtually are also encouraged to create inefficient mappings from their respective locations using the materials available to them. The completed inefficient mapping can then be photographed and emailed to [email protected] for inclusion on the official EEIG website.