April 15 @ 6:00 PM – April 16 @ 6:00 PM
Event Details:
Throughout history, maps have helped shape human endeavor and experience. Hardly neutral and deeply embedded in the faultlines of power, maps have been used to name and delineate lands, peoples, and states. They have been used to create, and to sever, relationships according to race, economics, language, and more––from Ptolemy’s Geography in 150 AD, to the 1491 map that led to the colonization of the “New World” and theft of Indigenous lands, to the 1885 Berlin Conference that divided Africa, to redlining and urban renewal maps that segregated US society in the 20th century, to Google Earth that has become indispensable in the 21st.
Yet, for just as long, artists, activists, communities, and those cartographically marginalized—especially people of color—have drawn themselves, their histories, their dreams, and their realities onto new self-determined maps. At The LP, we noticed that many of the artists we support were engaged in feats of radical, imaginative, and liberatory counter-mappings.
Inspired by them, Radical Mapping: Making Meaning in Our Communities is a three-part virtual public program that gathers artists, historians, mapmakers, local leaders, and community members to share how mapping concepts and methods can democratize the knowing, keeping, and making of people and place. We will explore how Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and other communities of color can creatively use practices like cultural asset mapping, cartography, and archiving to invest in and make meaning of our localities.
>> This virtual event is free and open to the public. Register for individual components.
