The world congress of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG - Fédération Internationale des Géomètres) takes place every four years. Following the event held in Washington, DC, in the US, the next congress was staged on the trade fair grounds in Munich, Germany, from 8 to 13 October 2006 in conjunction with the "InterGeo".
The FIG was founded in Paris in 1878 and is the sole international body representing all branches of surveying. The practical work of surveyors ranges from the management and exploitation of both built and unbuilt areas of land and sea in accordance with the needs of society and with environmental constraints, and extends to spatial planning and development.
An exhibition of art, bearing the title "The City and the Stars", was held on the premises of the Bavarian State Office for Surveying and Geographic Information in Munich. The idea and concept for this project were drawn up by the artist Michael Lukas, who has been concerned with the subject of cartography and art since 1989.
"The City and the Stars" makes reference to links that exist on a cosmological level: the locations where cities were founded and the routes taken between urban settlements based on observations of the stars. The physical as well as the mental traversal of territories is the starting point for this joint artistic investigation. In the course of the exhibition, pictorial and literary stances converge and are fused to form a conceptual, interdisciplinary research project. As part of the dialogue between different cultures, a discussion should take place about concepts of historical, autobiographical and mental maps: the map transformed from a representational object to a polyperspective depiction of the world.
The concept
Parallel to our everyday perceptual view of land- and cityscapes, Jongku Kim (Fig. 2) uses fine shreds of iron - a by-product of the process of reducing traditional metal sculptures to their final form - to create a mobile landscape. From a ground-level perspective, a webcam transmits a horizontal landscape image, which is projected on to the wall as a panoramic view. Seen from above, the landscape is transformed into writing that formulates a question of scale.
In his landscape models, which he calls "mind-scapes", Yuan Shun (Fig. 3) uses the four elements to explore the influence of human action on world ecology and its dependence on the global system. With photography and videos, he creates a virtual reality of our environment.
Derived from the traditional central perspective view with which we are familiar, the horizontal line that extends from point to point to divide heaven from earth forms the basis for our phenomenological view of the world.
In an artistic dialectic with the vertical view, Michael Lukas (Fig. 1) has made reference to topographical forms on our planet. The outcome has been complex concepts of the world that in their links with each other are overlaid with numerous motifs of disintegration. Through changes of scale, the vertical view can describe a microcosm or a macrocosm. In contrast to the white areas of terra incognita, black areas form a field of disintegration or erasure and signal a potential picture plane within the format that has been treated.
A vertical link between earth and sky is created by the tower or skyscraper: an architectural structure that formulates a state of permanent change in the "in-between" realm. In their tendency to take off and rise upwards, the mountain, tower, pigeon, balloon, aircraft, rocket and satellite indicate the inexorable development of the wish to encompass more than was possible hitherto from a limited, earthbound vantage point. The dictates of central perspective give way to a polyperspective concept of the world that can be experienced simultaneously from various points.
Whereas the cartographer works empirically and analytically, the artist pursues subjective and inherently artistic criteria of visual order; for the latter, the map becomes a tool for exploring space and ideas. Visitors enter the works of Dieter Kunz in communication with the spatial confines, not unlike using a reciprocal navigational system (horizontal/vertical). As with physical areas, one stands in a correlation with the information that is provided by the spatial boundaries; here, location and information lie at the centre of the artistic exploration.
Jupiter, Titan, Poseidon and Atlas are not just names from mythology and astronomy. They are also trademarks in the catalogues of people who deal in weapons. This real "observation" throws us back to our relationship with our own selves and results in a merging of the linked aspects of content, history and topography. This is illustrated in exemplary form in the battle-scene pictures by Asmus Petersen and in the work of Satomi Matoba, in which one finds a fusion of the topographical urban structures of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.
Sylvie Bussières' "Geo-Shoes" combine two elements of great symbolic importance for locomotion and travel: a map and shoes. Here, maps become the skin of shoes. Maps are wrapped round the footwear in the same way as shoes enclose the feet. Concealed behind a seemingly ironic cartographic patchwork in the work of Bussières is a recycling of ideas and values that pervade the history of aesthetics and modern art: objet trouvé, ready-made and collage.
The physical and mental traversal of landscapes and urban spaces is documented in numerous cartographic records and travel reports. "Geopoetics" is a working area that comprises the description of a plane defined by vectors. The authors Prof. Karl Schlögel, Wieland Grommes, Gerd Holzheimer and Kenneth White were invited to contribute to this subject. White, who coined the term "geopoetics" in his philosophical thinking as early as 1978, describes the relationship between nature and man as a central element of this, as is our perception of the universe.
"The City and the Stars"(2006)
Edited by Prof. Günter Nagel, president of the Bavarian State Office for Surveying and Geographic Information (LVG) und Michael Lukas
Layout design: Michael Lukas
ISBN: 3-89933-281-4
German/English text, 264 pp.