VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

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Public understanding of many aspects of modern life are routinely, and sometimes wildly out of step with reality. One suggested way of addressing this problem, is to develop local exhibitions comprising visual displays of civic statistics, presented in affective and memorable ways. Maps too, may be employed in such spaces, particularly in terms of exploring the movement (and the displacement) of people across space, and time, including as a consequence of natural disaster, exile and war. No mere pedagogic tool, the map (like the infographic) is bound up with arguments, with values and with particular ways of understanding the world. Recently, an ethical debate about how best to ‘speak for’ populations affected by such events, has emerged. The use of arrows is a particular concern, for several reasons due to their past use, concerns around the ethics of representation, agency and autonomy, and questionable associations with the idea of certainty. The author begins from a theorisation of communication via maps as hospitality, a liminal notion involving a reciprocal balance of rights and responsibilities. Ontologically situated within a hermeneutics of trust (rather than suspicion), this project involves interviews with map designers, concerning their thoughts about and uses of news maps in the coverage of population displacement during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 2022. Alternative methods to arrows will be explored, that seem to express in their own way, a sense of liminality. New insights on standards of good practice for the design of maps for mass audiences, will be offered.