Christina Shivers

Landscape Rep. No. 1
Category: Speculative
Year: 2017

This project utilizes the graphic inscription qualities of the geologic map as its conceptual framework.  Emerging from the same positivist scientific desire that led to the creation of nuclear weapons, the geologic map possesses a form of power not to be underestimated.  According to Bruno Latour, scientific inscriptions such as graphs, tables, and maps possess a form of knowledge that can only be produced and verified in spaces he terms “centers of calculation”.  Ranging from laboratories to universities, “centers of calculation” are the places responsible for quantifying the world in order to act upon it.  In this sense, the geologic map can be fully understood as a form of power enacted upon the landscape.