Experimental Geography
Curated by Nato Thompson
The manifestations of “experimental geography†(a term coined by geographer Trevor Paglen in 2002) run the gamut of contemporary art practice today: sewn cloth cities that spill out of suitcases, bus tours through water treatment centers, performers climbing up the sides of buildings, and sound works capturing the buzz of electric waves on the power grid. In the hands of contemporary artists, the study of humanity’s engagement with the earth’s surface becomes a riddle best solved in experimental fashion. The exhibition presents a panoptic view of this new practice, through a wide range of mediums including sound and video installations, photography, sculpture, and experimental cartography.
The approaches used by the artists featured in Experimental Geography range from the poetic to the empirical. The more pragmatic techniques include those used by the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) in projects made with students and other non-art groups that aim to strengthen peoples’ roles as agents of change in their own environments. See, for example, their map intended to help longshoremen and truckers identify chokepoints in the cargo trade network. In their similarly empirical projects, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a research organization, examines the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface. CLUI embraces a multidisciplinary approach that forces a reading of the American landscape (such as the disfiguring effects of culling natural resources from the picturesque banks of the Hudson River), thereby refamiliarizing viewers with the overlooked details of their everyday experience.
Experimental Geography is curated by Nato Thompson, curator at Creative Time in New York. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, co-published by ICI and Melville House, that includes essays by Thompson, Jeffrey Kastner, and Trevor Paglen.
ARTISTS
Francis Alÿs, AREA Chicago, The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), e-Xplo, Ilana Halperin, kanarinka (Catherine D’lgnazio), Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, Lize Mogel, Multiplicity, Trevor Paglen, Raqs Media Collective, Ellen Rothenberg, Spurse, Deborah Stratman, Daniel Tucker, Alex Villar, Yin Xiuzhen
TOURING SCHEDULE
AVAILABLE
Contact us to book this exhibition
April 22, 2011 – December 31, 2011
Freeman Art Gallery, Bishop’s University
Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
January 21, 2011 – April 1, 2011
Museum London
London, Ontario, Canada
October 9, 2010 – January 2, 2011
The James Gallery, The Graduate Center at CUNY
New York, New York
June 24, 2010 – August 27, 2010
The Colby College Museum of Art
Waterville, Maine
February 21, 2010 – May 30, 2010
Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
October 10, 2009 – January 30, 2010
The Albuquerque Museum
Albuquerque, New Mexico
June 28, 2009 – September 20, 2009
Rochester Art Center
Rochester, Minnesota
February 7, 2009 – April 18, 2009
Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University
Greencastle, Indiana
September 19, 2008 – December 2, 2008
RELATED EVENTS
Experimental Geography panel discussion
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
6-7:15 pm
July 20, 2010
Contestational Cartographies Symposium
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
January 28, 2010
via Independent Curators International – Experimental Geography.