Shannon Mattern | How to Map Nothing: Geographies of Suspension

Two years ago – or, a century ago in phenomenological and political time – artist and writer Jenny Odell published to much acclaim a book about How to Do Nothing. She made the case for retreat or refusal as an act of resistance to capitalist productivity and laid out a plan of action for “holding open [a] place in the sun,” for attending to the world’s sensory richness. Not even a year after the book’s release, retreat was imposed on the world in the form of social distancing and lockdowns, and many people found themselves doing a whole lot of involuntary nothing. Maps and graphs showed stilled air traffic and transit systems, depressed economies, shuttered businesses and sheltering communities. Yet underlying these geographies of suspension were networks in furious motion, systems of social welfare and surveillance that have historically functioned off the map, either in informal economies or on proprietary dashboards. In this talk, we draw from feminist geography, critical race studies, and critical disability studies to consider how we might map the flip side of a COVID-19 dashboard: what pulsing yet precarious systems make suspension possible for those who can afford to retreat?
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This event is co-sponsored by Places Journal. CASA is based at The Bartlett, UCL's Faculty of the Built Environment, a member of the journal's international network of Academic Partners.

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