Art has taken a distinct “cartographic turn” in the last century. This period represents a veritable explosion of artwork that takes on cartography in order to critique, subvert, and reimagine territory. Artists have made maps, subverted maps, performed itineraries, imagined territories, contested borders, charted the invisible, and hacked physical, virtual, and hybrid spaces. There are three loose groupings of important mapping impulses that have characterized the artistic appropriation of cartographic strategies, both literally and metaphorically, from the early twentieth century to present times: 1) Symbol Saboteurs: artists who use the visual iconography of the map to reference personal, fictional, utopian, or metaphorical places; 2) Agents and Actors: artists who make maps or engage in situated, locational activities in order to challenge the status quo or change the world; and 3) Invisible Data-Mappers: artists who use cartographic metaphors to visualize informational territories such as the stock market, the Internet, or the human genome. This article outlines and contextualizes these three impulses with numerous examples.

My work is interdisciplinary and distributed across various sites, physical and virtual. A single project might take place online, in the street and in a gallery, and involve multiple audiences participating in different ways for different reasons. Many of my projects are collaboratively authored - by iKatun, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, or other people and groups that I have worked with. We develop projects in response to a particular site and temporal context (a public video screen in Harvard Square, a festival that lasts 11 days, an exhibition on eBay, and so on). These contexts are important to understand, or imagine, if you are just looking at the documentation.

I focus on the humorous, imaginative gesture - on taking a performative leap to try to research something in the real world. How many breaths does it take to evacuate Boston? What would the city of Cambridge look like if we could all rename its public places right now? What do the spaces between our words sound like? What does the weather on my body look like? How can you measure fear? I stage encounters between different audiences as a research strategy to answer these questions. The encounters may be small or go unnoticed, but they resonate together in the archives generated by the project. These archives take the form of performances, sculptures, websites, books, maps, audio CDs or videos. Each project reinforces the (perhaps romantic, perhaps true) notion that a small, imaginative gesture can offer up alternative political and aesthetic ways of being together.

2008
Finalist, James & Audrey Foster Prize. Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
Second place, Best Show in a Public Place. Association of International Art Critics (AICA), New England chapter.
Best Local Artist, Improper Bostonian Magazine

2007
RISD Faculty Professional Development Grant.
LEF Foundation Contemporary Work Fund (to iKatun).

2006
Artist to Watch, Year in Review, Big, Red & Shiny magazine.
Individual Artist Award (to the Institute for Infinitely Small Things), Cambridge Arts Council.
RISD Faculty Professional Development Grant.
RISD Part-time Faculty Professional Development Grant.

2003-5
Academic Scholarship, two years, Maine College of Art MFA Graduate Program.

2003
Winner (iKatun), Turbulence net.art competition.

1999
Rotary Ambassadorial Fellowship for one year of study in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

iKatun is an artist-run organization whose mission is to foster public engagement in the politics of information. iKatun runs experimental curatorial platforms and supports art projects. Our most recent project is Platform2, a series of irregular events designed to facilitate dialogue about art & social engagement.

iKatun was founded in 2000 as a 501(c)3 organization based in Boston, MA. It is run by Co-Directors Catherine D’Ignazio and Savic Rasovic.

See Curatorial for specific projects.

Phone
617.501.2441

IM
kanarinka (Googlechat), kanarinkabot (Yahoo, AOL)

Business Address:

iKatun
144 Moody Street
Building 4, 4th Floor
Waltham, MA, 02453

She is Co-Director of the experimental curatorial group iKatun and a founding member of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things. After spending eight years in educational technology as a java programmer & technical project manager, she now teaches at RISD’s Digital Media Graduate Program. She has also taught at MIT, Emerson College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

kanarinka is the recipient of various awards, including a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for independent study in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a 2003 Turbulence.org networked art competition award and grants from the Cambridge Arts Council, the LEF Foundation, and RISD. She has been on juries and editorial boards for institutions such as Real Art Ways, the Berwick Research Institute, Art Interactive, Cartographica journal, CAA’s Public Art Forum and ShiftSpace.

kanarinka has lectured widely about her collaborative creative practice at venues ranging from conferences (College Art Association, American Association of Geographers) to universities (Harvard University, UNC Chapel Hill) to art spaces (the Tate Modern, The Change you Want to See Gallery, Brooklyn). She has also written articles about geography, (micro)politics and art for publication in various geography journals.

The former Director of Exhibitions and Programs at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA, kanarinka maintains an experimental curatorial practice through her work with iKatun in organizing the occasional exhibition, festival or screening, and, more recently, the Platform2 event series. kanarinka has a BA in International Relations from Tufts University (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She has lived and worked in Paris, Buenos Aires, and Michigan, and currently resides in Boston, MA.

Courses:

Creative Programming for Artists
(Fall 2007)

DM Continuum (with Daniel Howe, Fall 2007)

Performance (Fall 2007, independent study with three students)

Digital Media & Place (Summer 2007, part of
the Fusion Art Exchange program via RISD’s Office of Public Engagement/US
Dept of State)

Technology Workshop (with Gideon Webster, Spring 2007)

The Real World (Winter 2007)

Performance Art & Feminism (Fall 2006)

2nd Year Thesis Seminar (Fall 2006)

Creative Programming for Artists (Fall 2006)

Public Lecture Series (Spring 2006)

Emergent Digital: Creative Programming (Fall 2005)