Weekend In A Morning - Silk Road Map Competition

NOTES ON A CONTEMPORARY MAP

From the diary of a Silk Road traveler
"My bag is made of leather. You can close it with a thin lace. In my bag I'll put the seeds I gathered on the road. Every element/fragrence? I came across during this journey. They will remind me of the different colors of the earth, the looks of women from over their shoulders and those of men from under their hats (...). Gathering seeds in a bag means trying to regain tiny pieces of earth. Understanding distance by putting together fragments of different cultures (...). There is no 'Silk Road', there is a story of routes made for exchange. A rope that keeps together day and night; east and west. A long market that unfolds between land and sea. Trains and boats (...). I picture the roots that, under the earth, entangle, too, in order to connect worlds that wake up or go to sleep at a different pace (...). I'm walking on this carpet, between Venice and X'ian, with a hand full of seeds that could tell you about all the colors I've seen."

"For some time I have been thinking about trying to make a 'contemporary map'. An image that goes beyond the geographic dimension and is able to return the exchange of looks that create a space. A map that is not describing, but evoking. Its aim is to get across geographic experiences. The experiences of farmers, nomads, hunters, and maybe also cosmonauts. (...) I often wonder what "evoking" means today, in the era of continuous flow of information (...). I tried to travel along these tangled routes, woven by a tailor on the oriental side of the world. I've drawn it, I've described and photographed it. Only now I realize that its only genuine reproduction consists in the seeds that I gathered in my leather bag (...). They describe the passage between two civilizations: from the draught of the wheat to the wet ground of the rice fields. How beautiful would it be, if every passenger on that train could have a hand full of these to keep for himself (...). My map is this bag full of seeds. A way to fight the abstraction that we are forced into by communication and language."

Category:

Science & Technology

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