Drawing like a state
Maps, modernity and warfare in the art of Gert Jan Kocken
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4476264 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Simon Ferdinand (0000-0003-3412-5031, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 319-338 |
| Publication date | 2017-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263775816658478 |
| OpenAlex | W2464758766 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 18 |
This article attends to the work of Dutch artist Gert Jan Kocken, one of the foremost arts practitioners to have drawn on geographical mapping for formal and thematic substance in recent years. Discussion focuses on his series the Depictions, in which found maps, made in pursuit of conflicting ideologies during the Second World War, are combined digitally into composite representations of cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin and Rome. Layering together hundreds of different cartographies, the artworks provide a concentrated exploration of the connections between maps, states and warfare. To grasp these connections, I read the Depictions in conjunction with Zygmunt Bauman's conception of the modern state as a 'gardener' of society and space. In doing so, I highlight Kocken's vivid demonstrations of not only the transformative potential released in state military mapping but also unevennesses and dialogic complexities with which even apparently totalising state gardening projects are fraught. My study of the Depictions builds an image of modernity as a contested garden; the article concludes by suggesting the commensurability of this vision with the social present
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Ideology · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Transformative learning · Visual arts · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Spatial and Cultural Studies
The Birth of Territory
Thinking Sociologically
Legislators and interpreters
Rethinking maps
Missing the point
National Socialism and the politics of calculation
Socialism
Globalization
Urban Informality
Chaos and Order
New War, Good War and the War on Terror
Errant Paths
Seeing Like a State
Uncertainty and Urban Life
From a View to a Kill
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |