Deconstructing maps with Pinot Noir and plasticine
I am travelling and have been watching CNN news in a Palmerston North motel. 1 'Everyone is happy', a journalist informs, 'NATO is here.' A reference to Yugoslavia, another place, another country. The anchorman is in a news-room studio with activity occurring around him; a map of the world is on the wall behind his right shoulder. it is coloured two shades of blue. New Zealand cannot be seen, it is blocked by the back of a television monitor or some such object. So I am travelling within a country that I cannot see on a map. It feels like an anomaly. The map on the wall of the CNN studio reminds me of the work of New Zealand artist, Ruth Watson.
A recent exhibition of Ruth Watson's work at the Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch, was titled 'Where to Interrupt the World'. Taken literally, the title suggests an omnipotence by presupposing an ability to do something to the world. It does not ask, for instance, 'How to interrupt the world?'. But, then, its grandiose tone is purposefully whimsical: in fact, it might suggest a disdain for, or a discordance with globalisation-a theme Watson's work addresses.
In a sense, some part and aspect of the world is being interrupted constantly-by earthquakes, fires, floods, cyclones and various other forces. World maps are 'interrupted' by lines that reference medians, longitudes, latitudes, time zones, borders and other boundaries that are employed to serve a form of representative function but that otherwise do not physically exist. Within mapping jargon, this is essentially what the term 'interrupt' means.
Cartography, the drawing and study of maps and charts is, supposedly, an exact science. On a grand scale... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline