All posters are sold out, but get notified then the new map is ready and you will receive a email then it is with a discount code as well here: here!

Work is under way for a new map

Watch a Prezi presentation of the background here.

See a high resolution image (but with watermarks) here

The map is a map of an Africa that was or chereould have been if history would have played out a bit differently. It took almost a year of artistic research and crafting to make this map and even if I am not a professional historian  I would dare to claim that is a fairly accurate representation of the most prominent states and cultural groups in pre-colonial Africa though at times quite an anachronistic model

I have first and foremost looked at historical states ie territories with a centralised government during the point they controlled the largest areas during the time frame of 1300 - 1844 AD with most of the states in the more recent part of that time frame. In areas where no centralised government existed that I could find information about  I have looked at names of cultures that have inhabited an area for a longer time and where there is at least some information. As a last resort, I have used the names of the language groups that existed in the area.

When it comes to other specifics of the map here are some details: The map is 'upside down' compared to the common practice today where North is considered up, but in old Islamic cartography South was often on top, and the context of Sankoré Madrasah – a medieval Islamic university with 25 000 students in the city of Timbuktu in the 14th century Mali Empire is the normative setting of the map.

Therefore Timbuktu is chosen on the map as the place where the zero meridian goes through instead of Greenwich in London. Therefore is also the date 1260 AH (Anno Hegirae, years since the Hijra of Muhammad in 622 AD) Islamic, and Alkebu-lan was old Arabic for 'Land of the Blacks'. The names of 'tribes' in Europe or as it was known in the Islamic world 'Frangistan' as well as the names of the ocean is all spelt in Arabic transcribed with Latin letters.The font used for all text on the map is 'Justus' because it closely resembles the fonts used for old 19th-century maps.

The map uses a 'Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection' which display the size correlations between Europe and Africa much better than the often used 'Mercator projection' which make you believe that the continents are roughly the same size. Africa is more than three times bigger. Madagascar is, for example, bigger than Sweden and Denmark (not counting Greenland) together.

The map legend - shaped like an eight-pointed star, uses the original Chinese symbols for the points of the compass, the text is written in. I hope is not a poor online translation of Swahili. It indicates, among other things, that 'the map is written in Swahili with Latin letters for the educational purpose of our European subjects'.

Territorial control is the fundament for power for individuals, states and corporations throughout history. Acquiring territory is often done by pure military might for states and by spending capital for individuals and corporations, but some times more unusual practices occur.

The usual justification for control over territory is historic ones about countless generation of ancestors telling the soil, or brave soldiers spilling their blood on the battlefield, for example the nazi idea of 'Blut und Boden'. 

I'm interested in the more unusual methods and justifications.

North Pole

Russia planted a flag on the seafloor of the North Pole in 2007,  two mini-subs – Mir-1 and Mir-2 – planted a one metre-high titanium Russian flag at the depth of 4 300 metres on the underwater Lomonosov ridge, which Russia claims is directly connected to its continental shelf. If Russia's claim is approved by the UN, the country could gain rights over supplies of estimated 10 billion tonnes of oil and gas. As the ice cap is melting because of our combustion of fossil fuels, exploration and drilling new ones gets easier. 

Spratly Islands

The Spratly Islands are a group of coral reefs in the South China Sea which is the busiest shipping lane in the world and also rich in fish, potential oil and gas. There are 14 natural islands in the reef, seven are occupied by the Philippines, one by Taiwan and six by Vietnam, all countries with real land area close by. On a Chinese map from 1947 a line – known as the 'Nine-Dash Line' – marks all of the South China Sea as belonging to China. In 1987 China installed a small military post on Fiery Cross Reef on the pretext to build an oceanic observation station. The have since then built at first small temporary structures, later concrete forts and since 2014 artificial islands. By June 2015 china had created 13 million sqm of land on these seven submerged reefs: Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Hughes Reef, Johnson South Reef, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef. This have been aptly called the 'Great wall of Sand'.

On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled in a case between China and The Philippines that "there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources, hence there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights over the nine-dash line" , that "Spratly Islands are rocks under United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and therefore are not entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone" and that "China's land reclamation projects and its construction of artificial islands in the Spratly Islands,  had caused severe harm to the coral reef environment"

I thinkt that the idea behind the construction of artificial islands are to present the world with 'fait accompli' a physical Chinese presence that will be impossible to remove without outright war. The artificial islands are full of logistical, economic, cultural and most importantly military installations. This includes, deep sea harbours so large ships can berth and landing strips both vital infrastructure that have both civilian and military use, gun turrets and what according to military experts could be something similar to the Nazi german anti air fortification 'Flaktürme' which would deny any foreign power the airspace above the area. They have also  raised monuments, green houses and fish farms. Hosted large celebrations of the first airplane to land on the islands with dance and musical performances.

Post-truth

In a post-truth world where regular warfare between sovereign countries is unthinkable, US drone attacks, Russian little green men, land grabbing in Africa and Chinese Great wall of Sand is the new low intense conquest where propaganda, wit and myth is as important as it was for Dido 2 800 years ago. I have tried to portrait these territorial claims in an art stile reminiscent of classical and folk art of the nation claiming the territory, to connect it to the national mythos and contrast it to the artificial nature of the claim. Russian folk art celebrates mythological knights decorated with beautiful intricate flowers often on wooden utensils such as a chopping board.  Chinese ink landscapes celebrate the tranquility of the ancient hills that have eroded under millions of years and the beauty of unspoiled nature. 

How much land do we have at our disposal per person in the world? I asked myself that question during the autumn of 2011 and since I could not find any information online that summarized those facts I decided to investigate it myself. It's 21 275 m², which is kind of hard to decide if it is a lot or not. Of those just over two hectares are less than a tenth, 1 995 m², arable land.

I had a small and very short exhibition on the 27th -28th of January 2012 where I showed a model of a 3/4 part of an island near my school, 21 275 m² in a 1:200 scale made by small stripes of land from different biomes.  I also served tea, coffee, beer and wine in amounts according to a seven billionth part of one week of the world production.

I moved to Berlin about a week later where I continued to work with the same theme. This time I wanted to focus on the arable land part of our alloted land area. Therefore I made a garden in Berlin.

More info to come

Ancient currency. More info soon.

Okinotorishima

In 1931, Japan declared an uninhabited atoll – located more than a 1 000 km south-east of Okinawa – Japanese territory, placing it under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Metropolis, and naming it Okinotorishima. These barren rocks give Japan control over more than 400 000 square km of the sea  in their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This is an area larger than the Baltic ocean and potentially rich in oil, manganese, natural gas, fish and control over important maritime trade.

There are two problems though since according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an island is "a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide" and "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone.". Japan have to prove that there occurs sustained economic life and ensure that the naturally formed rocks remain above the water at high tide, but Typhoons erodes the rocks and they would have been completely gone today if the Japanese government would not have acted. 

To solve this, between 1987 and 1993 the government of Tokyo and later the central government built a titanium net, concrete wave breakers shaped like tetrapods and steel and concrete walls to stop the erosion of natural Okinotorishima rocks, and a research facility that looks like an oil platform, at at total cost of about 600 million USDfrom 1987 up to today. Regular fishing expeditions are launched around the islands to back up the claims of economic life. The result is strange looking concentric cakes of concrete, steel and titanium, a weird land art that artificially protects small natural rocks that from the beginning were a stretch to call islands but like magic stones give immense power over the seas and their resources. 

Dido Problem

The mythological Queen and founder of Carthage – Dido – was named co ruler together with her brother Pygmalion of the Kingdom of Tyre by her father, but the people tried to oust her from that position so she fled Tyre with a group of loyal followers and sought to found a new kingdom in North Africa. She asked the local Berber king Iarbas for a small bit of land as a temporary refuge, only as much land as could be encompassed by an oxhide. He took pity on her and agreed. Dido then cut the oxhide into fine strips so that she had enough to make a half circle from the coast and encircle anearby hill, which would become Carthage. This has also given name to a Mathematical term sometimes called 'Dido Problem'. The use of wit in the myth instead of tilling the soil or military prowess is interesting, regardless of how it actually happened.

Mural painting I made in Akalla in Stockholm at the Akalla Fritidsgård.