New Works: Meta-Geographies



petroleum lines, 2008, archival inkjet print on paper, 110 x 200cm



petroleum lines, (detail) 2008, archival inkjet print on paper, 110 x 200cm


america is from mars and europe is from venus(2008) archival inkjet print on paper, each 170 x 110cm



america is from mars (detail), 2008, archival inkjet print on paper, 170 x 100 cm

Meta-Geographies, combines a variety of satellite images with text and other information taken from the Internet.

petroleum lines (2008) combines satellite imagery of the main Saudi Arabian oil terminal, Ras Tanura with images of Toyota, Japan; Wolfsburg, Germany; and Flint, Michigan (the headquarters of General Motors). The combined geographical image shows parts of the various motor cities partially submerged in the waters of the Persian gulf.

Source code, algorithms and charts overlay the whole picture and refer to scientific measurments of water temperature, ice melt and the effect of fire on climate change.

The series uses metaphor and metonymy to map the structures of geo-political relations and connections in the ever shrinking space of the globalized 21st Century.

America is from mars and europe is from venus (both 2008), refer to an phrase coined by the American neo-conservative Robert Kagan after the 2004 Madrid bombings. The works not only literalise Kagan’s word, placing an aerial view of the Pentagon on NASA photos of the Martian surface, and views of the European Commission and European Parliament on Venus, but also add additional layers of information in the form of source code excerpts, as well as art historical and symbolic meaning.