The Mediterranean without borders

The Mediterranean map hasn't been published for at least 15 years,

due to profitability. This document no longer exists for the public. It cannot be folded on a table and is no longer the object of real off-screen debate.

I am an artist, and I often wonder about the presentation of these places in map making. I know I'm not the only one who thinks it's terribly sad that the mediterranean can no longer be seen in real (what we can view without the intermediary of a smile and a screen).

I could not bear it any longer, so I began setting about tracing the lines, routes, rivers, railroads. I ignored the borders: the only thing that symbolically divides men. I was thus contented with tracing the thousands of lines which link them with the thousands of points or places of exchange: towns, little ones, big ones...

The work is now finished and will be exhibited for the first time at the 'Les Variétés' cinema (37, rue Vincent-Scotto Marseille) from 2nd to 27th December 2011.

It will take the form of a giant 6 x 3 metre map on which the public can walk, so:

WE CAN FINALLY WALK ON THE SEA !

http://www.facebook.com/groups/150474571699386/

Thanks in advance for your help! :-)

The sum I need will pay for the giant map to be printed, and for the first 250 60x84cm copies.

And what if you are too generous?

The project has only just begun; the cart is going to be translated into all the alphabets used in our regions and should be printed in even larger quantities.

Sabine continues to follow the path she adopted since she began her work: to give all populations the possibility to be represented in an optimal position in map making, to make them think of a reality, a future, a power to organise outside of the North-South hierarchy.

This artist started to 'remake the world' in 1998, at a time when the internet didn't exist and when maps were studied in real, on folded out paper, placed on the table or on the floor, alone or in a group, like ants around a jar of honey.

World map making which is found in trade was not a French, ethno-centric map making, and the possibility of imagining the world in a different way was an inaccessible potential. Maps with the US represented in a central position, and where Australia was placed at the top of the document, a real myth.

Her position has been frank from the beginning of her work: to offer a new map making model so that the North and the South are no longer divided in terms of hierarchy. In order to achieve this, her globes and drawings of the world always represent the West in a superiour position, an orientation which follows the course of the sun and which is a first in the history of map making.

To represent a world orientated towards the West enables each country to draw a map where it can be in a central, superiour position. A dynamic hierarchy, were no country is condemned to remain in a fixed position.

« Mediterranean without borders » is printed in the latin alphabet for this exhibition but is part of a project to translate for all populations.

You can discover her work at the following address :

http://www.sabine-rethore.net