One can not testify to an event during its perception. The necessary delay between the retinal impression, the interpretation of the image and its public witnessing are the base of the relation between knowledge construction and visual representation. Recent developments in neurobiology show us how memory is a dynamic between the brain and the self, how perception is an active motion of our body.
Would it be possible to translate these notions to the difficult relations between polity and space? How can we start to unveil the processes that link the changes in one domain to the instabilities and changes in the other? Mapping and charting are amongst the most powerful tools of the geographical discourse. They convey the notion of universal and general knowledge of the situation, of command and dissemination, of rule and control. We will start with some issues related to the Globe and how that refers to an enlightened project of a generalised and universal body of knowledge. We will explore the difficulties created by that project by starting with classical situations of geographical atlases, and we will proceed to frame the problematics in an un-centered manner, trying to identify the dynamics of polity and space, of groups and their representations of that relation. What happens when we try to cross these practices of knowledge with the unknown, the not yet recognized? With the multiplication of subjects? With the overlapping of different voices? When different accounts refer to the same facts? Are there foundations to our testimonies when memory is not shared? Can we think of exchange and knowledge production as blockages, rather than as signifiers?

Preservation, stasis, stagnation, downturn, blockage, maintenance are modalities of transformation, just as development, alteration, modification, growth, extension. In ordinary language we describe by the word ‘planning’ the complex of interrelated decisions about the allocation of available resources. We will explore how these transformations are managed, induced, and taken into consideration in a number of different locales. Departing from the generic notion of local specificities shaping the relation of society to its environment, we will look at how environments are neither matrix nor stage of cohabitation. We will investigate the constant negotiation of our preferences with the punctuated political arrangements and diatribes. Can we think of place beyond stability? What happens when there is no consensus, when discord is pre-eminent? Can we re-think notions of place at a moment characterised by the dismantlement of duration, or memory? What is needed for something new to appear? Can the critical modes of dissent and divide reside at the centre? Can we consider other modalities of joining, beyond harmony, drama and contiguity? Can we re-invent a locus?