Mapping a landscape is an act of creating narratives – not about depicting land itself. What cartography renders visible are the interactions between humans and the landscape. To investigate the socio-political dimensions of mapmaking, Korporation Uri serves as a case study: a centuries-old commons in Central Switzerland which manages vast areas of alpine pastures, glaciers, and rocky fields.

The organisation can be interpreted as a construct of a bygone age, based on inherited privileges and inequalities. But the commons are also a utopian promise of shared ownership and equality. Within these tensions, locals create visual manifestations of Korporation Uri’s mountainous landscape – be it webcam images, models, maps or herbariums. With all these diverse practices of mapping, they shape the identity and history of the place and thus take collective ownership of the land. The project The Landscape Assembles as We Gaze collects expressions of mapping surrounding Korporation Uri. As mapping means establishing narratives, this project embraces polyphony – and becomes a map itself.
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→ this project is the foundation for my contribution to Outside the State: Our relationship to the land