Mind The Map • Book Launch
29.05.2024, 18.30
Talk with
Loranza Pignatti and Niccolò Cuppini
Presented by
Valentina Parisi
“Mind the Map”, an evening hosted by Careof, features the presentation of two volumes: “Planetary Metropolis 4.0” by Niccolò Cuppini, professor and researcher at SUPSI in Lugano, and “Radical Cartographies: Activism, Artistic Explorations, Geofiction” by Lorenza Pignatti, professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Art at Naba in Milan and curator. Valentina Parisi, a writer and expert on Russian literature and culture, will talk about them.
Digital cartography has radically transformed the forms of visualization and mapping of territory. Given the tracking we are subjected to within an increasingly dense network of technologies, whose mechanisms are becoming more opaque, collectives, activists, and NGOs have redefined the notion of cartography, mapped, and made visible economic and social processes, political ecology, and gender issues.
“With a survey of seminal works, Lorenza Pignatti's 'Radical Cartographies: Activism, Artistic Explorations, Geofiction' delves into the relationship between art and cartography. Maps are used to challenge conventional wisdom, offer a less naive interpretation of modernist geography's codes, and disrupt the connection between territory, map, and scientific representation. Along with the Ippolita Group, Juan Guardiola, Anna Castelli, and Franco La Cecla, Pignatti has also advanced the transdisciplinary conversation between the humanistic and anthropological domains and geography.”
“What tactics can groups and artists devise to go beyond simply being observers of the creation and dissemination of geolocated information and images? In what way can they create new formal mappings for the creation of social and political instances?” - Lorenza Pignatti
“The geographies and chronographies investigated by Niccolò Cuppini's 'Planetary Metropolis 4.0' present a genealogy of contemporary urban dynamics and some of their future transformation trends. The author elaborates on the concept of 'planetary metropolis 4.0' to describe contemporary configurations, highlighting the planetary dimension of the processes, the importance of digitalization in defining them, and the political and conflictual dimensions that generate them. 'The geographies constructed in the pages of 'Planetary Metropolis 4.0' seek to escape the series of theoretical traps, empirical aporias, and epistemological counter-circuits that permeate urban studies.' - Niccolò Cuppini”
image credits: Clement Valla, "Postcards from Google Earth", 2010-ongoing.
LORENZA PIGNATTI
Lorenza Pignatti is a lecturer in Phenomenology of Contemporary Art at Naba in Milan. She is the author of "Mind the Map. Mappe, diagrammi e dispositivi cartografici" (Postmedia Books) and, with Franco Berardi Bifo, of "Adbusters. Ironia e distopia dell’attivismo visuale” (Meltemi). She has curated the exhibitions "Dilettanti Geniali. Sperimentazioni artistiche degli anni Ottanta”; "Damage Control”, a solo show by Mika Taanila at the Padiglione de l’Esprit Nouveau in Bologna; and the retrospective of Pere Portabella for the Festival del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro. She collaborates with international newspapers and magazines such as “il Manifesto”, “Frieze”, “ArtReview”, and “e-flux journal”.
NICCOLÒ CUPPINI
Niccolò Cuppini is a lecturer and researcher at SUPSI. His research focuses on urban transformations explored through a geographical, historical, and political lens. He is a member of the collective research project Into the Black Box and part of the editorial board of the journal "Scienza&Politica”. He has published, either individually or collectively, the books “Un mondo logistico” (2019), “Nel vortice del presente” (2020), “Capitalismo 4.0” (2021), “Mega Events, Urban Transformations and Social Citizenship” (2022), and “Metropoli planetaria 4.0. βeta Testing” (2023).
VALENTINA PARISI
Valentina Parisi is a Slavic studies scholar and translator from Russian, Polish, and German. She has published "Il lettore eccedente” (Il Mulino, 2014), an essay on clandestine Soviet publishing, "Guida alla Mosca ribelle” (Voland, 2017), and "Una mappa per Kaliningrad. La città bifronte” (Exòrma, 2020). She is a researcher in Russian Literature and Culture at the University of Macerata.
Clement Valla, Postcards from Google Earth, 2010-Ongoing
