Mapping a City

The city of Hamburg provided the Galerie für Landschaftskunst and the Kunstverein in Hamburg with an ideal example of an urban metropolis for a joint project entitled "Mapping a City: Hamburg Cartography." In a series of works devoted to the exploration of urban space, international artists investigated ideas about nature and landscape. In addition to serving as a basic reader on the subject of "mapping," the book presents the diverse results of their artistic and scholarly research. The American artist Bob Braine, for example, tracked down the former city fortifications and investigated the occurrence and lack of vegetation in the city with the aid of infrared aerial photographs. Following the course of an imaginary line from his apartment in Altona to Kiel, Till Krause drew a map showing visual obstacles and cell-phone reception. In his watching u, watching me project, Malte Urbschat observed security-service personnel at work. Daniel Maier-Reimer followed the course of the city border of Hamburg and photographed ambiguous in-between spaces. And the British artist Nils Norman saw the old Hanseatic city as a gigantic adventure playground. The artists: Bob Braine, Stephan Dillemuth, Mark Dion, Anna Gudjónsdóttir, Anke Haarmann [AHA], Kristinn G. Hardarson, Florian Hüttner, Jussi Kivi, Till Krause, Daniel Maier-Reimer, Matt Mullican, Nils Norman, Patrick Rieve, Malte Urbschat, Mark Wehrmann, Ralf Weißleder, Malte Willms