Abstract
How are journeys mapped? By starting with this simple question, this workshop will examine the tensions between indigenous cosmologies and sacred geographies, on the one hand, and cartesian logics and hegemonic cartographies, on the other. Locating our conversations in both the mountains and the seas, we ask in what ways do geographic sensibilities configure ways of being and moving in historical and contemporary contexts? How do indigenous knowledges and non-Euclidean cartographic practices challenge, disrupt, and bend to modern forms of scientific production? Placing aesthetics into dialogue with scientific methods, we intend to bring anthropologists and geographers together with artists and physical scientists to move cartographic conversations beyond singular disciplinary frameworks.
Points of discussion include, but are not limited to, the transformation of historical Himalayan pilgrimage routes and pathways into modern thoroughfares of globalization (Galen Murton); geographies of colonization and indigenous (re)mappings in the South Pacific (Philipp Schorch); historicizing European cartographic expeditions to Highland Asia (Roswitha Stolz); cartographic hopes and anxieties in the Pamirs (Martin Saxer); First Nation sacred geographies of resistance and land claims in the Canadian tar sands (Daniel Dumas); tracking and dissecting Tupaia’s chart (Gordon Winder); and artistic cartographic imaginations and methods (Marta Normington).
Rather than formal papers, we ask each participant to prepare a 20-30 min presentation of work-in-progress research material, which considers and places in context one (or both) of the following questions: 1. How are journeys mapped? and 2. What are the effects – epistemological, ontological, political – of such cartographic interventions? 30 minutes of open and critical conversation will follow each presentation. A limit of seven participants will allow one hour per presentation/conversation.
Conveners: Galen Murton and Philipp Schorch
Invited participants: - Daniel Dumas - Marta Normington - Martin Saxer - Roswitha Stolz - Marie Aschenbrenner - Gordon Winder
Location: LMU Munich
