| Note |
Juria Toramae: I made a composite of all these islands—all the maps from 1800-something toward 2015—and the composite shows how some islands were small, and then reclaimed and became bigger and bigger. It’s not the entire map of Singapore, but just the southern islands because that was the focus of the essay.
[0:21]
Joanne Leow: What do think then is the limitations, but also the possibilities of mapping, of cartography like the work that you’re doing? Why maps, you know, why do that? Some people are like, “oh but maps, they control the ways that we see the thing”—
Juria Toramae: Yeah.
Joanne Leow: —but what you’re doing is different, because you’re almost superimposing the maps on each other and that creates a kind of different effect, so I’m really interested in that.
[0:42]
Juria Toramae: I mean, it’s just to show the changes, basically, and to show the change through time. And that’s why I stated the name of—you know, I said the reference of the maps, I said the years, so if you actually wanted to look you actually could look. The thing is, when you see all these maps alone, it’s really hard for you to actually make a comparison, but if you had them all together in front of you, you can actually say, “oh wait, this thing actually became this big,” things like that.
[1:09]
Joanne Leow: That’s really awesome. I think it’s so awesome because you’re not then just—you know how when you map something you’re just like, it’s a fixed point in time—
Juria Toramae: It’s a stating…
Joanne Leow: —right, it’s a static, you’re stating that “that’s there,” you go that way that’s there, but what you’re doing is like, you’re introducing this kind of idea of memory or history or temporal change within this static object.
[1:30]
Juria Toramae: Yeah, so it’s like compressed time. And it’s exactly what I did with my Points of Departure work. Basically, you know, all the people are from different photographs, different time, but from the same space, same place, and when you compress them, like, certain memories would just meet each other. Some don’t, some eliminate each other, whatever it is. That’s what it is, yeah, that’s what I did. |