MAPPING UTOPIA 

Map programming by Io Dogani

[2018]
INTERACTIVE WEB MAP
ARCHIVE

Mapping Utopia is an interactive web map which suggests a critical exploration of the utopian imaginary and its relation to violence. The project explores utopias as means of disruption, rather than as imaginaries which set goals of harmony and peace for communities (states, ethnic groups, classes, religions etc.). In Mapping Utopia, imaginaries such as these are approached as bringing about processes of conflict, exclusion and violence, through their positioning an “other” (state, ethnic group, class, religion etc.) as the obstacle standing in the way of their utopian realization.

To this end, the geographical features of the imaginary island, as described by Sir Thomas More in the book Of A Republic’s Best State And Of The New Island Utopia (1516), were used to create a variation of the utopian island on the basis of the real map of the Balkan peninsula. Images found on the internet regarding state warfare, urban conflict, concentration camps, ideologically and religiously motivated terrorist attacks, etc., which took place in the Balkan peninsula, are noted as manifestations of utopian imaginaries in the altered rendition of the map. Thus, the events brought about by utopian imaginaries appear to draw the map of the troubled Balkan geography.

The island of Utopians, according to Thomas More, used to be a peninsula called Abraxa. When King Utopos conquered it, he ordered both the vanquished natives and his soldiers to dig a 15 miles wide canal in order to create the island.The island created was crescent shaped, 200 miles across in the middle part, gradually tapering towards the 2 ends with 54 cities “entirely identical in language, customs, institutions and laws”. For the creation of current map, the map of the Balkan peninsula has been manipulated virtually so as to correspond to the fictional account. Furthermore, corresponding to Utopias 54 cities, 54 clickable points on the map lead to photographic and video documentations (presented in .giff format) of historical, political and social disruptions.

The images appeared are accompanied by the yearof the event, geographical coordinates of the place, a short historical descriptionand a label classifying each event according to a corresponding utopia (national, ethnic, ideological, religious and fortress).

“Mapping Utopia” has been presented in “2nd ASFA BBQ 2016: Performing Utopia”, at Athens School of Fine Arts curated Giorgos Papadopoulos and Vasilis Vlastaras, and,  in “ 5th Odessa Biennale of Contemporary art:  Turbulence”, Odessa, Ucraine, curated by Mikhail Rashkovetsky.