In this fourth edition of the Art and Design Research Practices series, initiated by Alice Twemlow and Niels Schrader, the KABK Design Lectorate turns its attention to counter-mapping as an artistic research practice.
While previous editions explored walking, touching, and listening, this interview examines how counter-mapping can serve as a tool for resisting and reimagining prescribed borders and territories, and raises complex questions around representation, participation, and ethics.
For this interview, Design Lector Alice Twemlow spoke with Sophie ‘Soph’ Dyer, a designer, researcher, educator, and one half of the feminist collective Open-Weather. In their practice, Soph combines participatory and investigative methods to create digital archives, tools, evidentiary models, maps, and speculative fiction. Alice and Soph met at the National Archives in The Hague, where nearly a thousand years of Dutch history are preserved across 142 kilometres of documents and 800 terabytes of digital files.
Twemlow and Schrader are currently working with the publisher Hatje Cantz on a publication on counter-mapping.
