Artist talk and discussion with Alexis Bhagat

In Sharjah, most people do not use maps to navigate city streets or to find places to go. Instead, they use visual clues to get around, rely on word-of-mouth, and draw upon their own or their community’s past experience to know where to go and what to do.

Maps are mostly used by tourists and by professionals involved in producing and maintaining the built environment. The artists Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel will ask residents of Sharjah for their assistance in creating a map that is very different from the one made for tourists. This map will be created by and for residents of Sharjah, adding a layer of personal history and memory over a base map of the city.

The Sharjah InfoCart is a public information kiosk where information will be collected that will be used to create the new map of Sharjah. Over two months from November to January, the InfoCart will travel to various public locations throughout the city.

Alexis Bhagat will introduce the ideas behind this exciting new project and present working designs of the InfoCart being developed with students from American University of Sharjah. Following the talk, Alexis will be joined by Nida Ghouse, Assistant Curator for Sharjah Biennial 10, to hold an open discussion on the practice of artist participation in public places.

Alexis Bhagat
Alexis Bhagat is a writer and artist, based in New York. He speaks and writes on anarchism, cartography, cinema, sound art, peace, and language. His sound compositions are deployed as installations, 'lectures' and radio broadcasts, and he frequently collaborates with the transmission arts organisation free103point9. He also hosts a regular programme on sound, music and aural culture called Speakers on Red House Art Radio. He is co-editor (with Lize Mogel) of An Atlas of Radical Cartography (Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, 2007), a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays on social issues ranging from garbage to globalisation.

Lize Mogel
Lize Mogel is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the interstices between art and cultural geography. She creates and disseminates counter-cartography – maps and mappings that produce new understandings of social and political issues. Her work connects the real history and collective imaginary about specific places to larger narratives of globalization. She has mapped public parks in Los Angeles; future territorial disputes in the Arctic; and wastewater economies in New York City. Her recent projects rethink popular representations of the world as it is shaped by global economies. Lize inserts and distributes cartographic projects into public space and via publications.

Together with Alexis Bhagat, she is co-editor of the book/map collection An Atlas of Radical Cartography and co-curator of the travelling exhibition An Atlas. She has worked with groups including the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Exhibitions include the Gwangju Biennial (South Korea) and Sharjah Biennial (UAE), PS1(NYC), Casco (Utrecht), and Experimental Geography (ICI, touring). She has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Danish Arts Council for her work.

The Sharjah InfoCart is planned as a public information kiosk that will travel throughout the city collecting information for a new map of Sharjah.  Bhagat is collaborating with artist Lize Mogel on this project.

The talk will be followed by an open discussion on the practice of artist participation in public places.