Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

Nato Thompson

Melville House, 2008 - Art - 168 pages

A photo of a secret CIA prison. A map designed to help visitors reach Malibu’s notoriously inaccessible public beaches. Guidebooks to factories, prisons, and power plants in upstate New York. An artificial reef fabricated from 500 tons of industrial waste. These are some of the more than one hundred projects represented in Experimental Geography, a groundbreaking
collection of visual research and mapmaking from the past ten years.

Experimental Geography explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether). This lavishly illustrated book features more than a dozen maps; artwork by Francis Alÿs, Alex Villar, and Yin Xiuzhen; and recent projects by The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Raqs Media Collective, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

The collection is framed by essays by bestselling author Trevor Paglen, Jeffrey Kastner, and editor Nato Thompson.

What people are saying

Review: Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

User Review  - Monster - Goodreads

Apparently too art-po-mo for my blood. I found the book flashy and lacking in substance; I don't want to insinuate that the artists/authors are not critical, thinking people, but I was repeatedly distracted by this over-indulgent presentation that seems to portend unselfconscious privilege.

Review: Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

User Review  - Joe - Goodreads

informative, recommended overview of artists interacting with geography.

About the author

Nato Thompson is a writer and curator at Creative Time, one of New York’s most prestigious public art organizations. He is the editor of The Interventionists: A Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, a survey of political art of the 1990s, and Ahistoric Occasion: Artists Making History. He recently produced Paul Chan’s acclaimed Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, which included free public performances of Samuel Beckett’s play, theater workshops, educational seminars, and more.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism
• Editor: Nato Thompson
• Contributors: Nato Thompson, Jeffrey Kastner, Trevor Paglen, Independent Curators International, Richard E. Peeler Art Center, Rochester Art Center (Minn.), Albuquerque Museum, Colby College. Museum of Art
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Melville House, 2008
• ISBN: 0091636582, 9780091636586
• Length: 168 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning; Art / Art & Politics; Art / Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / General; Art / Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / Group Shows; Art / Graffiti & Street Art; Business & Economics / Development / Economic Development; Fiction / General