Map of the world is a world map, printed and plastified, fixed on metal boards. In contrast with an ordinary map, we erased the names of the countries and capitals leaving only the administrative borders. The capitals are stuck on magnetic support so that they can be moved on the map surface. The idea took shape in 1999, when one of us was living in France while the others were still in Romania, and in the middle of a chat we came up with this idea...what if Bucharest were in France? So this was one of the starting points of this project, the desire of moving and
changing places, of re-designing contexts, “areas of contact” as Deleuze said. We made an attempt to create a tool for dialogue, an “auxiliary” for debates,
interventions or workshops linked to different issues such as globalisation, cultural
emigration, tourist standardization, trajectory and different kinds of transgressions. Map of the world was first presented at Frac Alsace, within the frame of a
conference. The public came up to play with it. The playful part of the project has an important meaning for us, because it shows up relevant critical attitudes, underlining obvious opinions and reactions to the "clichés" of the media. People moving Jerusalem as alternative to Washignton. This type of reaction is likely to appear more easily in the frame of a game, but can be(come) a problematic matter in the media. Moving the capitals, people expressed their opinion, everyone could make their own map of influences, overturn the order of the world. Currently, we are working on a web site - www.versionmagazine.com - where we want to put the map on, thus creating a medium where people can express themselves by giving different sorts of answers and they can make it interactive by adding a sort of “open forum.”
— Version

Gabriela Vanga, Mircea Cantor, Ciprian Muresan

www.versionmagazine.com

www.context.ro/cantor/insert/index.html

Selected activities: 2003: The Map of The World, Lisieres, Strasbourg; 2002: Version 0.3 (special edition); Version 0.2, September; Festival-RDV Roumain, Espace en cours, Paris; 2001: Free Show, Centru Cultural Sindan, Cluj Napoca, Romania; Artistpoly, Project for the Romanian Pavilion; Version 0.1; The Best Sites Of The Week, weekly emails on the Romanian open forum list nettime.org (work in progress); 2000: Say What?, Eforie, Bucharest.