The Violence of Cartography: In Conversation with the Exhausted Geographies Team

In the second part of a continuing conversation with the Exhausted Geographies team, we reflect on the historically fraught process of map-making and the various methods artists use to subvert histories of violence and state power. Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani talk about how some of the contributors to the anthology did this: either by introducing their subjectivities and poetics while avoiding the idea of empiricism, or by centring data that challenged the normative rules and practices of cartography.

The conversation delves into the second volume of Exhausted Geographies, a collection of texts and images engaging with Karachi’s landscapes that are at the intersection of infrastructure, war and ecological crisis. This anthology draws on collective research undertaken for the Gadap Sessions—a course organised by Karachi LaJamia in collaboration with the Karachi Indigenous Rights Alliance in 2016. These sessions set out to study and document the historical township of Gadap at the outskirts of Karachi in light of contemporary projects of development, displacement and climate change. Discussing the role of photography and image-making within their research methodologies for such a publication, the artists talk about anonymity and the tensions of representation that accompanied their on-ground research.

_{(Featured Image: "The Railway," Exhausted Geographies. Vol. II. Karachi, 2017.)}

Interview with Anisha Baid, 21 January 2021.