experimental geography at colby college

Visited Colby College yesterday to view the museum exhibit, Experimental Geography. Enjoyed my time tremendouly and intend to visit again before June. Hope many visit, bring friends and share their experience. The selected works offered varied media and methodology on the experience of and dynamic possibilities for questioning space as landscape, cartography and urbanism. Our lives exist in places. These constructed space struggle with their defined spaces; This exhibition didacticly engaged issues of experience. The issues of boundaries for a particular place and individual was tacticly achieved through pieces such as Ellen Rothenberg's De-Stabilized Geography and Yin Xiuzhen's Portable Cities. Whe I found the advertisement for the exhibition, I was drawn to the video piece, The Road Map, 2003. The work followed the travels of an israeli passport and a Palestinian passport along two routes in the same latitude. The Israeli traveler took 1 1/2 hours where the Palesinian took 4 1/2. The video projection with color and sound brought you with each traveler simotaniously. The viewer experienced the particulars of the region's landscape, culture, human relationships, political boundaries and the random changes of military requirements. The journey poetically disected the human conditions of landscape. The use of cartography is a new idea for me. I first encounter the form at my first Vermont residency, winter '10, in the work of my advisor, Ashley Hunt. The power of the map as a trusted didactic form and the ability to address and transform language limitations and problems of address are both matters I look forward to reading more about in the exhibition's book and in my research. Great Show!