Panel Statement

Panel: Rogue Troopers: Designing functional and fictional disruptions

Writing in the 1990s, the critic Fredric Jameson argued that the postmodern condition, with its vast global networks in which we are “caught as individual subjects,” calls for “an aesthetic of cognitive mapping”. Over the subsequent two decades, Jameson’s hypothesis was effectively tested in the wave of cultural activity around mapping, partly enabled by the accessibility of two formerly military technologies: satellite navigation and the internet. Mapping and information visualisation were relinquished from the tight grip of professionals into the spheres of amateur, open source and experimental practice. More recently, the geographer Jeremy Crampton has analysed contemporary mapping practices, arguing that it is a “field of knowledge and power relations” being pulled in several different directions.  Crampton describes a pull toward ‘securitization’ on one side, countered by ‘resistances’ on the other. ‘Securitization’ emerges from post-war efforts to rid cartography and GIS of any association with art and propaganda and render it ‘post-political’— a position that the resistance side generally finds untenable. The resistance side is characterised by critical cartography, map art and the open source movement; millions of amateurs and novices using hitherto inaccessible mapping technologies to construct a vast ‘geoweb’. In co-opting former military technologies, the recent wave of locative media practitioners exemplifies an emergence of disruptive, resistant practices. With smart phones, space is annotated and re-stitched together and new networks are galvanised. Drawing from a range of writers and theorists, this presentation explores the functional and fictional possibilities of this activity.

• Peter Hall, Griffith University, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, Australia. Peter Hall is a design writer and educator currently located at Griffith University Queensland College of Art, where he is developing a new Design Futures program with design theorist Tony Fry. His research focuses on uses of mapping and visualisation in design criticism and practice. His books include Else/Where: Mapping – New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (2006). He writes regularly for Metropolis magazine in New York, and is the co-founder of DesignInquiry, a non-profit educational group in North America, which explores research topics in intensive team-based gatherings at remote locations. peterahall.com