Unmapping Territories, 2024

project collaboration Non Linear Narrative

Unmapping Territories was a research collaboration between the master Non Linear Narrative and the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, lasting from March to November 2024. The goal of the partnership was to scrutinise maps as documents of spatial representation and to explore the hidden stories behind twelve historical maps from the Navigation and Overseas Expansion collection. The project invited a new generation of designers to discover, analyse, and question map-making as an objective, neutral process.

The exhibition Archival F(r)ictions opened on 9 November 2024 and brought together thoughtful narratives exploring topics like the colonial plant trade, the blank spaces in cartography, the provision grounds of plantations, the oral histories of indigenous cultures, the songs of ancestral sorrow, the deterioration of archival material, the concept of an ‘amphibious’ archive, the history of the limbo dance, the fear of getting lost, the legacies of corporate colonialism, and feminist spatial practice as social and spatial justice. Check out the online publication on Issuu.

student participants: Juliana Acero Castellanos, Rodrigo Cardoso, Stefano Cattani, Stefano Dealessandri, Gjorgji Despodov, Carmen Draxler, Martin Escalante Robles, Laura Flethe, Rita Gaspar, Ieva Jakuša and Julia Löffler; project supervision in collaboration with Nick Ceton, Linda van Deursen, Floris Janssens-Andrejew, Victoria McKenzie, Saskia Oranje, Zion Piggott, Niels Schrader, belit sağ and Marjon van Walbeek; exhibition design: Shapeshifters and Spacebenders