Partial Map or You Can't Get There But You Can Get Close
is a multimedia performance in the form of a lecture. Generally, the talk explores utopia and paradise as aesthetic vocabularies, their historical genealogies and the ideological and material effects of these archetypal expressions in architecture, cartography, cinema and urban planning.
The parallel relationship between (paradise:utopia) and (past:future) is drawn out in an effort to understand the desire for these structuring strategies. Specific topics include EXPO Shanghai 2010, glass architecture, the history of palm trees in Los Angeles, Walt Disney's utopian dreams, paradise as mythology and marketing strategy, the Future, and other related topics.
The talk is structured around a general armature, though the presentation is extemporaneous. The projections, which change as the performance unfolds, employ non-linear image software, searchable and therefore flexible and improvisational. As a performance, the talk will evolve over time, and each iteration will engage a slightly different nexus of topics, drawing out the stories and connections among an idiosyncratic collection of historical anecdotes.
