Mapping as a visual arts practice: social geographies of contemporary Beirut

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the absence of street names or recognizable addresses, paired with rampant unplanned development and a lack of municipal initiative, Beirut defies traditional readings and can be described as unmappable. This paper documents an attempt to synthesize my ongoing artistic practice and my academic research into the representation of the contemporary city. It incorporates Guattari’s machinic, Debord’s psychogeography, and Rauschenberg’s neo-Dada approach to objects, all seen through the lens of Landscape Urbanism, an emerging field of study which places ‘the emphasis on urban processes … to construct a dialectical understanding of how [spatial form] relates to the processes that flow through, manifest, and sustain it’ (Corner, 2006. Terra fluxus. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The landscape urbanism reader (pp. 21–33). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. p. 28). Conventional methods of looking at the city rely on static components and techniques, rendering them ‘inflexible in relation to the rapidly transforming conditions of contemporary urban culture’ (Waldheim, 2006. Landscape as urbanism. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The landscape urbanism reader (pp. 35–53). New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p. 37). By incorporating traditionally unmappable forces, a machinic analysis of the city results in a more responsive, process-based framework that helps to dissociate systems from traditional formal and programmatic qualities. The subsequent mappings do not present the recognizable urban forms or landmarks usually associated with Beirut; my maps are not about way-finding. Instead, they are anecdotal diagrams, abstract schematics, and stylized image/objects that are intended as creative visualizations of subjective experiences and cultural practices in contemporary Beirut. They aspire to be insistently provocative to the urban way that ‘transforms the city … into an autocritical artifact’ (Vidler, 1992. The architectural uncanny: Essays in the modern unhomely. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 210).