Hana Havlíčková
(Theory and History of Art, UMPRUM)
Eliška Klimešová
(Photography, FAMU)
Kristína Opálková
(Photography, UMPRUM)
Glib Sydorenko
(Architecture, UMPRUM)
The main focus of the Fluid Cartography project are rivers and other surface water bodies – their evolution induced by climate change and the abundance of living and non-living entities they consist of. Altered biophysical processes manifested in extreme weather events and destabilized flow rates instigate a closer consideration of the conventions of water streams’ visual representation. The project suggests that in the near future, static cartography (or hydrography) might not be entirely suited for the mapping of the changing hydrological dynamics. Moreover, the very concept of map making as an established, institutionalized practice, may hinder our understanding of the multifaceted implications of climate change itself. What if instead, we chose to represent water systems as a web of fluctuating relationships and interactions?
The project revisits the universalist, anthropocentric approach to mapping that tends to reduce or overlook diverse aspects and actors of a given territory. It aims at creating an alternative cartographic tool that foregrounds environmental processes and dependencies among various entities and draws attention to the hardly visible struggles they’re facing due to the changing hydrological conditions. Stories of living organisms, institutions or infrastructural facilities become a substantial component of a map: together, they form an intricate, fragile network of fates and prospects.
The proposed way of representation defies abstraction as a foundational principle of cartography. The team focused on a specific area: the aquatic ecosystem of South Bohemia, near the town of Třeboň. The stories the “fluid” map tells narrates both the history and the future of various entities that are bound together by the common denominator of climate change and its impacts on the local ecosystems and the global water cycle. The landscape of South Bohemia is interlaced with water bodies, be it rivers, artificial waterways or ponds built in high density over the past five centuries. Eurasian carps, cyanobacteria, black-necked grebes, phosphorus or nitrogen, sewers, alder trees but also long forgotten defunct villages are mutually entangled in a complex web of uneasy, often ambivalent relationships mediated by water. Is climate adaptation possible without actually acknowledging these dependencies and what kind of practices would emerge if we embraced the fluidity of territories we try to map?
Format: website & video, 2 min 48 s
Fluid Cartography Website
