Open School: To go South, one must go up: a stroll through maps of SWANA

Open School lecture with Sherine Salla.

What happens when one embarks on a journey to shrink and flatten the whole world into the size of one’s palm? What forms in the crevices of geographic maps when person after person, and generation after generation, pass down information that skews ever so slightly with each and every hand? How many realities can a map hold when there is an infinite supply of them on this earth? And how many of those realities are erased?

Taking our time and getting lost in world maps from the SWANA (Southwest Asia & North Africa) region from the 9th to the 18th century CE, this talk is an invitation to see the world anew.

This lecture was adapted from a lecture titled “Disorientating SWANA: A Journey Through Maps" presented on BIPOC Design History’s Design Histories in Southwest Asia & North Africa: Voices from the SWANA Diaspora course.