The Spine That Binds Us Together

---

The atlas before you is a series of individual stories, each told by someone with a relation to the sea - whether dock worker, sailor or explorer, whose personal accounts are presented as illustrative coastlines. The maps are not intended as faithful reproductions of specific locations, rather they are conceived as translations of recollections; places and times summoned for their pertinence to the life of the subject. The following pages depict the understated significance of individual marks on history, utilising the primal methodology of place described through oral narration, thus disregarding the canonical stature of official maps as established institutions.

 
The project takes its inspiration from Kitab-ı Bahriye, the renowned Book of Navigation (1513). Authored by Piri Reis, an Ottoman geographer and admiral, the elaborate maps were not based on first-hand experience, but rather verbal depictions of his seafaring contemporaries. Over twenty maps of Arab, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and Greek origin were composed in this way, despite Piri Reis never having sailed to the Atlantic. The portrayal of lands witnessed through another set of eyes has been fundamental for the use of conversation as a primary resource in this manuscript. The following maps are perhaps more closely related to the consolidation to memory of patterns and experiences, than they are to the accuracy of a modern coastal chart.

130X50X50cm, paper, leather, metal, wood, lamp, fabric, 2014

Image courtesy of Sarah Iremonger and Rana Ozturk
Special thanks to Tom Harrup