Laramie

students from Laramie in collaboration with Rebecca Solnit, Ben Pease, and Shizue Siegel

December 8, 2011-January 22, 2012

CIIS Minna st gallery

A map of Jakarta or Quito is a map of a place you can imagine walking; and a map of home shows you where you are, where you’ve been, and who is there with you. Mostly maps show us what we expect, but that is just a convention: you might more often need to know where the highways are than the bird migration routes, but both are equally real.

—Rebecca Solnit, “Maps of Kindness”

When Beth Loffreda, director of the University of Wyoming’s writing program asked Rebecca Solnit to propose a student project to complete while in residence at the school, Solnit proposed an atlas of Laramie. The students took up the challenge, working with artist/cartographers Shizue Seigel and Ben Pease to map the narratives of this small Western town, where salons are more numerous than saloons and where a warming planet intersects with a Cold War.

On Mapping: Winter 2011-2012 Exhibitions at CIIS (excerpt)

by Susannah Magers, curatorial intern The Arts at CIIS

What makes a place? So reads the first sentence in the front book jacket of Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. Currently on view at 695 Minna, Laramie: A Gem City Atlas pursues a similar task; to visualize information about the various narratives that constitute the social, economic, historical and political constellation of a location, in this case Laramie, WY. Partnering with the University of Wyoming ‘s Creative Writing MFA program, along with Infinite City cartographers Shizue Seigel and Ben Pease, this particular mapping explores subject matter ranging from Native American reservation sites and ancestral land to paranormal activity. Below I ask Solnit some questions relating to her passion for mapping, her current projects, and the potential of Laramie: A Gem City Atlas.

SM: Showcasing the Laramie, WY maps through exhibition is an effective, wonderful way to experience and expand the life of the project. Do you see similar exhibition potential for a work like Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas? Or, perhaps giving the Laramie project portability, in the form of a book, or alternative guide of sorts?

RS: I'm less focused on spreading my one atlas to date than in seeing atlases proliferate. I want to be the Johnny Appleseed of radical-lyrical mapping; I want every university to create an atlas of its locale, every city to have an atlas--let a thousand atlases bloom!

SM: What are some other cartography-related projects you’re currently working on, or future sites you’re interested in exploring in this way?

RS: I am talking to a few western places about atlases that may happen later, via universities, and we have launched a sequel to Infinite City, with a New Orleans atlas directed by New Orleans native and Emmy-award-winning filmmaker (and my wonderful friend) Rebecca Snedeker. It will have the same team—divine designer Lia Tjandra, great cartography team Ben Pease and Shizue Seigel, and editor Niels Hooper—as the first one and UC Press will publish it in late 2013.

Be sure to check out the work, and join us this Saturday, January 21, from 6-8 pm at 695 Minna, for readings and discussion about Laramie, Wyoming, mapping human geographies, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Rebecca Solnit is joined by cartographer/designers Shizue Seigel and Ben Peas