This panel discussion will take place at Conflux HQ on Sunday, September 14, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

Project Description::

The spread of global positioning systems, interactive geolocating tools and social networks have ensured that mapping is even more fashionable than the new black.

New technologies have not just freed us from the curse of impossibly difficult to fold and unfold paper maps, they have freed geographical data themselves. At least, that’s what it says on the box. Until recently, the representation of territory was coming “from above”. Maps were conceded exclusively by structures of power. Today instead, they are built by individuals who re-frame the urban space according to new coordinates.

The panel will introduce the work of a new breed of cartographers who know that even the most innocent-looking map has its own agenda and that far from being neutral accessories which would merely help you find your way in urban space, maps are often used as instruments for controlling and shaping beliefs. Conversely, maps can be at the service of protest and social change.

Speakers: Lize Mogel, John Emerson and Brooke Singer.
Moderator: Régine Debatty.

Bio of the panelists:

Lize Mogel is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the interstices between art and cultural geography. She inserts and distributes and cartographic projects into public space, including in Los Angeles (Public Green, 2001) and the Wood River Valley, Idaho (Migration Routes, 2007), and via publications (The Privatization of War, 2007). With Alexis Bhagat, she is co-editor of the book/map collection “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” and co-curator of the exhibition “An Atlas“, which is touring nationally.
She also co-curated “Genius Loci”, an exhibition of conceptual mappings of Los Angeles (Sci-Arc, Los Angeles; California Museum of Photography, Riverside). She has also worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Exhibitions include the Gwangju Bienniale (South Korea), Gallery 400 (Chicago), Overgaden (Copenhagen), and ³Experimental Geography² (ICI, touring). She has received grants from the LEF Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Danish Arts Council for her work.

John Emerson is an activist, graphic designer, writer, and programmer based in New York City. He has designed web sites, printed materials and motion graphics for leading media companies as well as local and international non-profit organizations. His writing about graphic design has been published in Communication Arts and PRINT, featured in Metropolis Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, and translated into Italian by the Italian Association of Graphic Designers. He co-founded the social media consultancy Apperceptive in 2006 and sold it to Six Apart Ltd in 2008. Since 2002, he has published Social Design Notes, a weblog of writings and clippings on design and activism at

Brooke Singer is a digital media artist who lives in New York City. Her work blurs the borders between science, technology, politics and arts practices. She works across media to provide entry into important social issues that are often characterized as specialized or opaque to a general public. She often uses emerging technologies because they are fun but also because they are contingent and malleable.

She is Assistant Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media. She has exhibited and lectured in the U.S. and internationally, including at the Andy Warhol Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Neuberger Museum of Art; The Banff Centre for the Arts; Biennale de Montréal; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Diverseworks, Houston; Exit Art, New York and Barcelona’s Sonar 2006. With her collective Preemptive Media, Brooke was awarded the first Social Sculpture Commission by Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2005. She has received numerous other awards including from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Franklin Furnace, Turbulence.org/New Radio and Performing Arts and the Experimental Television Center.

Régine Debatty (BE/DE) writes about the intersection between art, design and technology on her blog we-make-money-not-art.com as well as on design and art magazines such as Art Review (UK) . She also curates art shows and speaks at conferences and festivals about the way artists, hackers and interaction designers (mis)use technology.

Website: http://www.an-atlas.com