|
Instructors: Oleg Ködding-Zurmühlen; Prof. Dr. Julia Verne
Event type:
Project seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
M1-MA PS
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 15
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Contents:
Counter-cartographies of Extinction
In Western popular culture, science and media maps are common-sensical means for depicting geographies and making geographical arguments. Yet, they are rarely questioned for the stories they tell. In the past, maps had been used by imperial powers to tell the story of “terra nullius” legitimizing colonial conquest and resource extraction. Today, powerful actors both on the large and the small scale deploy maps for claiming new enclosures and exploiting more-than-human life-worlds. As acts of resistance to such life-destructive territorializing grips, counter-cartographies use the storytelling qualities of maps to make marginalized perspectives visible, establish counter-hegemonies or create utopias and mythscapes. Thus, as the meaning of maps as tools of storytelling are contested, “it matters what stories tell stories; it matters whose stories tell stories” (Haraway 2019). In our current times of “post-truth politics” and its “crisis of imagination”, this course seeks on the one hand to train imagination and storytelling as serious assets for critical geographical research and on the other hand to sensitize for how spatial arguments and abstraction are used to advance particular (political) interests.
Following introductions into critical cartography as well as performance theory and practice, the students are asked to critically engage with mapping as storytelling and take the map beyond its traditional format. In the light of an alarming rate of species extinction and the impending inundation of islands and cities due to sea-level rise, this course experiments with the creative geographical method of performative storymapping to engage with inheritance, loss and grief in a highly contested political and emotional arena: The students are encouraged to tell a story of their choice on the topic of extinction by creating storymaps with the help of the stage, the projection surface and the audience. In group presentations the students are expected to perform their stories and completely step into (theatrical) roles and the mapped worlds they have created.
|
