Space & Place I: Critical Mapping & Counter-Cartography

In this virtual event, Majd Al-Shihabi (Systems Design Engineer) discussed his work on Palestine Open Maps, highlighting the process of layering maps from different historical periods to show how representations and geographies have changed and how they are remembered through counter-mapping. Al-Shihabi also spoke about the work of translating colonial ontologies to Open Street Maps and the disparity between translated and original Arabic Wikipedia articles as a way to show how local knowledge is no longer attached to the spaces where it is produced.

Nermin Elsherif (CHEurope) discussed the common threads between mapping projects she created and participated in: creating counter-maps of Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo that challenge the colonial knowledge embedded in cartography by attempting to represent personal, literary, musical, and other stories. A driving force of her work has been negotiating the tensions and translations between the analog and the digital.

Ghazal Jafari's (University of Virginia) work interrogates how design and spatial processes are complicit in maintaining colonial power structures. She shared her recent project on the development of the Khuzestan region along the border of Iraq and Iran in the late 1950s, where the histories and practices of the region were erased by Point Four modernizing discourses and technologies whose dams have led to environmental degradation.

Timur Hammond (Syracuse University) asked participants to think through the questions of translation, temporality, and layering in their work. He continued the discussion by asking about the solidarities and successes fashioned over the course of Al-Shihabi, Elsherif, and Jafari's projects.