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cflow journal - issue 2013-2
Creative Assemblages – When aesthetics meet the economy or what do they have in Common?
Riikka Tauriainen
Ein Manuskript mit Fehlern und Bildern / A Manuscript containing Mistakes and Images
Lecture performance, duration 20 min, and traces of the performance combined with found objects as an installation in the exhibition, 2012 / 2013.
A Manuscript containing Mistakes and Images combines text taken from internet articles, Wikipedia and legislative proposals, as well as a collection of pictures which were found by thematic search on Google. The work is based on the connection between possible reference points such as universal categorization, taxonomy (a categorization system used in science), semantic networks (a form of knowledge representation), cartography, borders, state borders, border control, Schengen border code (Schengen Agreement) and deportation (the deportation law in Switzerland).
In contrast to the text that is linear in narration, the images are arranged in a random, undefined or transparent chain. This is an attempt to draw associative connections and dispositions between the images and the text, as well as to reflect upon structures of existing classifications, definitions and rules.
The lecture performance A Manuscript containing Mistakes and Images is a combination of a video projection showing the collection of images and a live reading by the artist. Originally the work was created in Basel, Switzerland in a former border lookout post and customs office situated where the Swiss, French and German borders meet.
Cartography
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modelled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.
In cartography spatial objects, situations or processes are generalised to scale and with the help of a sign system represented graphically in their spatial relationships. In the broadest sense illustrates a map abstract, spatial data and difficult formulated geographic relationships, with the aim to make them easily understandable to the viewer.
Maps are basically comparable to the real world on a scaled ratio. Whenever the scale forces a generalisation, one speaks of maps. If the phenomena of the real-world is almost without generalisation and mostly represented on a large scale, then one speaks of plans.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote in 1982: “In this Empire, the art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the space of a city and the map of the Empire the space of a province. Over time, these excessive cards did no longer satisfy and the College of Cartographers created a map of the empire, which had the size of the empire and covered it with every point.”
From the performance-lecture A Manuscript containing Mistakes and Images.