Demographics, we agree, are not just about gender.
demos: "people" and graphos:"writing"
...to write people... people written...writing people...people writing.
The body writes, is written, translated, inscribed, is described,
caligraphed, crafted in longhand, shorthand, script, printed in block
letters, with the hand, with the machine, on wax, in ink, in stone, in
ether. The character is revealed/concealed by the characters of the
writing. Scripted, stroked, cancelled, copied, scrawled and scribbled. The
itch, the fear, the fusion.
>When available information
>is abundant, in order to navigate, select, connect, _intervene_ meta
>content is vital.
Information is fecund, voluptuous, generative.
In addition to the
> the 'global' forms of knowing it aspires to...(and/or wrote)
...and the tyranny of knowledge this implies,
demographics can also write fluid maps,
maps as fluid as the self-contained oceans that we are.
> Different mappings make different schemes visible,
>opening different readings. (jouke wrote)
I am thinking now of these maps I saw once made by some island peoples of
the South Pacific (sorry I can't be more specific - I don't have my books
available and my short-term memory is rapidly turning to sand), the maps
were made of straight fibrous material like twigs or dried vines or sticks
tied together, and at each point of juncture there was a small shell. If I
remember correctly, the lines, (or twigs) represented ocean currents and
the shells were islands between currents. What was foregrounded in these
maps were the currents, not the islands - the interstitial spaces.
>The_appreciation_ of an audience is not very often negotiated, while i think
>it to be of prime importance. All kinds of communities/events desire
>expression and articulation and mediation and agency of their interests.
>The issue of authorship (so important on the institutional agenda) is less
>urgent with collaborative efforts, and in information exchange (remember
>Bali). With my own work all involved are equally credited (it will take a
>while before the read/write environment understands group dynamics, but
>that's another story). This is definitely post-studio. And less and less
>artefactual. For my upcoming project the former IXDocumenta pavillions, now
>an art center situated in a new Dutch polder, at the edge of a new city
>that serves as an Amsterdam suburb, will be professionally camouflaged by
>the Dutch military. It's the closing of institutional spaces, rendering it
>to the military/nature, that remains.
A current project of mine in NYC involves re-mapping Bushwick Creek
directly onto the land, at a one mile equals one mile scale. The Bushwick
Creek is a body of water which no longer exists, which in the
not-so-distant-past flowed in North Brooklyn (Dutch for broken land (?)) in
the terrain between Greenpoint and Williamsburgh (my neighborhoods). During
the Industrial Revolution, as it is called, the Creek was landfilled and
the two springs which fed it were plugged up and an industrial zone was
built on top, as well as a pretty nice park, and the High School for
Automobile Repair, and housing for dock workers which is now housing for
young artists. My intent, if all goes well, is to make a "floating museum",
a headquarters to deseminate information about North Brooklyn below ground
level. The most fluent collaborators I have encountered thus far have been
the senior people in the neighborhood, those over seventy years old who
remember different patterns and metascapes that escaped the contemporary
map-makers. They are an integral component of the
audience/collaborators/authors of this work.
Eve
.
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