Each shard represents one public gesture in a research-based artistic practice. A mouse click
brings the visitor into the shard and into the specific gesture. A new archipelago of shards
appears, containing either geolocated maps with markers and routes, or traces like images,
text, video and/or sound fragments… Each of these shards is again clickable. This opens up
full page maps and traces. On each level the side panels detail what is on view next to
giving access to related shards in other practices and gestures.
A working prototype
Eavatea is a dynamic, ever-changing artistic form for developing, visualising, presenting,
archiving and interconnecting research-based artistic practices. Often unfolding in situ,
Eavatea aims to incorporate these nomadic, collective, ephemeral and trans-disciplinary
practices. It offers an active form of ‘counter-mapping’, taking into account the experience
of physical space, the passage of time, the encounters between people and the stories they
share.
Eavatea is defined as a relational infrastructure that highlights connections between
practices, documents and organizations, in this way generating new unexpected links and
possible interdependencies. Eavatea aims to function as an agora, encouraging new modes of
collective research that could be developed through using the tool as a digital meeting
place, but also as a catalyst for physical gatherings. As a collective mode of curating, the
tool triggers the creation of a growing and always shape-shifting collection of knowledge
archipelagos, which can be made visible for a live audience or that can be consulted or
re-activated later on.
Eavatea stands for ‘high noon’ which was noted on a map drawn by Tupaia, a Polynesian master navigator who had joined Captain Cook’s expedition in Tahiti in 1769. Cook’s crew offered Tupaia a Mercator map to draw the Polynesian archipelagoes, but rather than drawing according to western convention, he drew a ‘counter-map’, combining the western system with a 'translation' of his wayfinding knowledge, which would include the oral tradition of ancestral songs and embodied knowledge of wind patterns, sea currents, movements of the sun and the stars, fish and birds and reflections on the underside of clouds. Eavatea is the point where two representational systems merge in an act of collaborative knowledge production.
Learning by doing
Eavatea was developed by a partnership between Jubilee, nadine, f.eks. in collaboration with
Atelier Cartographique. The current partnership is addressing a series of questions: how to
govern and finance the tool on the long term, how to distribute and share it with other
practitioners who would benefit from using this tool.
Eavatea aims to evolve into a federated model of small autonomous artistic groups and
organisations that fork the source code and adapt their mapping tool to the needs and
perspectives of their own artistic practices. Eavatea hopes to create different
interconnected mapping communities (inter)nationally that share mutual ideas and
commitments. Eavatea is a digital commons, but as a tool it requires maintenance and
updates. Through common ownership/authorship and subscriptions we are working on an economic
model that will make Eavatea sustainable.
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Eavatea is supported by the Flemish Community (VG)