On “Ryan Griffis – For an art against the cartography of everytday life”
Ryan Griffis talks about a new dimension in documenting history; well, at least a new realm of perceiving the world around us and how we are integrated into it. The ‘cartography of everyday life,’ as he calls it, involves the eventual absolute integration of the global positioning system within our lives. Griffis mentions one project, namely ‘MILK’, which gives a good account for describing the potential ramifications of such an integration. The given map’s legend provides an example of a simplified explanation: “Europe as Europe. No borders, just land with people and things. People and things that move.”
At the end of Griffis’ article he questions whether “it is sufficient to merely acknowledge complicity, to accept the dialectical utopian/dystopian visions.”
This is an example of ‘random walk.’ I found it on wikipedia looking up Brownian motion. It’s some kind of mathematical formalization of randomness. To be more specific, it depicts three totally unconnected entities, each consecutively moving one ‘step’ in a random direction.
After watching the daily routines of the ‘milk-workers’ there can’t be much hope of not seeing the similarity. Moving dots… But these (random walk) ones were random whereas the examples in the delivery of dairy had stories and ‘intentions’ behind their movements. Yet if we look at the milk stories without reading the subtexts, their motion grows more akin to the random walk we see above. MILK only shows movement throughout limited time period, and this random walk would theoretically go on ad infinitum. But if we think of what the paths of the MILK participants’ entire lives might produce on a screen, it would likely look much similar to the random walk. And if we then consider the genealogies of these participants, the cartography inevitably becomes simple Brownian motion.
Now considering what this might mean with respect to surveillance and social control, what the cartography of everyday life can provide is a basic background of every individual as well as an inventory list of anything they have legally purchased through the economic distribution systems…
The direction of this speculation may lead us to many worlds already preconceived, but after a while, this becomes irrelevant; for just like the three little balls, it’s next to impossible to predict where we’ll end up.
Griffis asks, towards the end of his article whether “it is sufficient to merely acknowledge complicity, to accept the dialectical utopian/dystopian visions.” Well, perhaps the situation would be better understood if inverted: If whatever ‘King’ Griffis is talking about is omniscient, wouldn’t the best way to protect the ‘kingdom’ from martyrdom be for the kingdom to see everything the king is doing? And shouldn’t simple acknowledging what might potentially happen to restrict our own actions be enough for us to be able to stop it? As Griffis refers to Martha Rosler quoting “If there are no victims – or if, what amounts to the same thing, we are all equally victims – then there are no oppressors.” But what does ‘victim’ here signify? Doesn’t it refer to the exposition of certain details of our personal lives? If there is no escaping this exposing, then shouldn’t it at least be known that it (and exactly what) is being exposed? Only then can we decide to do something about it..
…and lest we forget the ever presence of art to criticize, navigate, and document this personal/social evolution….
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