Marine cartographies

Abstract

A map is not just a spatial representation of a territory as it creates its own territory. More than indicating fixed points in space, the map gives coordinates for displacement. Before the era of orbital satellites, an external view of the Earth or a view that was “extraterrestrial” was possible thanks to the spatial projection from the stars. All cartography is cosmography. In nautical charts known as portolans, the profusion of lines that crosses at different points, even when they seem very random at first sight, point to an infinite number of possible paths. These maps, as they multiply the reference points and the course lines, fractalize the space, make each starting point a cleavage point, transform the point in line by the speed of displacement. With these maps, the first conquest of the Great European Navigations was the sea before the land one: they operated a territorialization of the sea or “sea-torialization” from a previous deterritorialization of the land. From utopia to heterotopy of the “New World”, the writing of space and time is constructed geopolitically. Comparatively, the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, conceive a different mode of marine cartography: a microcartography of marine intensities. Mapping these seascapes is an immersive way to create and inhabit uncertain territories. Finally, this text itself was perceived-thought as a portolan, whose lines of direction intersect in the circumferences of the paragraphs and point to infinite possible paths.