World Maps and World Mental Maps

Few days ago I’ve heard a good joke about an “inquiry that investigates the lack of foodstuff in the rest of the world. The inquiry failed because the people in Europe didn’t know what is shortage, in Africa they didin’t know what is food, and in USA they didn’t know what is the rest of the world”. This joke exaggerates the most typical prejudices about ignorant Americans who are not able to perceive the rest of the world, about poor Africans and spoiled reach Europeans.

Prejudices exist.  Armgard Seegers notices in his review for the German edition of Atlas of Prejudice in Hamburger Abendblatt, that “everyone knows the most popular prejudices are often not quite nice and are mostly politically incorrect. However, every society on Earth tends to marginalize specific groups, using the usual insults and slurs against those who are considered strange and foreign. And so even in a globalized world prejudices remain inevitable even if their list is slowly getting shorter”.

The Atlas of Prejudice is made by an intelligent graphic designer, with great sense of humor, Yanko Tzvetkov, who decided to do mapping on different stereotypes and prejudices that people from all over the world exercise on other groups and nations. These maps are rendering a different kind of perception of the existing national borders, emphasizing the invisible cultural factor that creates mind maps about the rest of the world. Some of the land borders have long since disappeared from the real world maps but the prejudices, like the one that the Americans have about the Russians, (which in the “Atlas” are described as “Commies”), persist.

Tzvetkov uses graphic design as tool for doing a different kind of cultural study. Besides the creative research he has done, he also performs a creative way of using both visual graphic and language in order to present a contemporary vision of the globalized world. His work  visually enriches the debate on “othering” and perception of the “other” that preoccupies contemporary academic studies.

In "Tearing Europe Apart" with simple usage of a graphic visual graphic tool Tzvetkov presents 20 ways how a continent (in this case Europe) can be sliced:

Tearing Europe Apart

He presents the slices of the Old Continent among Wine, Bier and Vodka Europe, Euphoric and Depressive Europe, Lazy and Hard Working Europe and so on. Everyone is very familiar with these mind maps. Besides, each one of us is very fond of all the simple, small details that represent our native places as special and different.Thus, global maps based on cultural paradigms can be a successful representation of such diversity..  And, if some artist happens to have great sense of humor, like Tzvetkov has, than diving and doing research on such maps can be great fun.(By the way I didn't missed the chance to take a look of Europe according to Greece only to see how they perceive Macedonia. Not so nice: Land X)

Europe according to Britain

Europe according to Switzerland

World according to US

These and other world maps successfully render cultural indications for geographical spaces that are primarily defined by national borders. In our minds geographical spaces are strongly connected with the cultural practices of the peoples. A specific spacial character bonds strongly together geographical features with cultural paradigms. Taking into consideration these cultural paradigms, each time a different world map can be rendered in a provocative way, teasing clearly defined national borders and displaying the more “natural” way human interactions function in today global world.

In addition, take a look at his other project on national cuisine "Cookbook". His blog is great too: http://alphadesigner.com/blog/