The Border Crossed Us was a temporary public art installation at UMass Amherst to re-stage the US-Mexico border fence on the Tohono O’odham reservation. Commissioned by the University Museum of Contemporary Art, the installation was conceived and executed by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things.

This book uses a variety of graphics to relate both the physical site at UMass Amherst, as well as the broader historical and political background of the project.

The Tohono O’odham are an indigenous tribe who have inhabited areas of present-day US and Mexico long before the existence of either nation. In 2006, as a result of the Bush Administration’s Secure Fence Act, a 75-mile vehicle barrier was erected that physically sunders O’odham communities, disrupts ceremonial paths, desecrates sacred burial grounds, and prevents tribe members from receiving critical health services.

The installation was essentially a giant photographic reproduction of this vehicle border, placed through the campus of UMass Amherst. It included a sound component, as well as a tour given by a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

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A map is a microcosm. Gazing at, viewers are given to believe that they see an expanse holding the space where they stand, gazing. The potentiality for an object to encompass the world is realized in a map. Such objects offer to the viewer a reality — that thing which is the phenomena of lived experience bound into one coherent piece. Like readers of a fiction, viewers must give themselves to the narrative, believing its truth if only for a single instance before returning to the experience of life. The cartographer’s chief burden is the same as the writer’s: to reveal the best ascertainable truth through that simplification called depiction. The responsibility and the power inherent in the production of a tiny cosmos is great, and even the best data cannot decide the nuances in where, how, and why a piece is made.

In the Spring of 2010, a representative of the James Ford Bell Trust announced to the press he was “thrilled” about the foundation’s new, one million dollar acquisition: a map of the world. Purchased from a private Japanese owner, this was one of six existing copies of the 408-year-old depiction created in northern China under a 1584 decree of the Ming dynasty court. The first Chinese-language map to describe the Americas, clouds of script float over seven continents in a ocean notably free of monsters or whirlpools, margins full of descriptions of planetary movements and physical principles.^[1] Even as the piece — twelve and a half feet across and five and a half feet high in all its six panels — began its own first-ever imperial procession through the United States, its meaning was already being refined (or defined) by its new owners. “There is some distortion, but what’s on the map is the result of commerce, trade and exploration, so one has a good sense of what was known then,” said the co-manager of the Trust, an organization created by the founder of General Mills to illustrate the impact and history of international trade before 1800, with its facilities now housed at the University of Minnesota. Following the map’s first public exhibition, it was scanned into UNESCO’s World Digital Library, whereupon its contents became accessible in high-resolution to any Internet-attached computer on Earth.^[2]

In 1602, on the 34th year of the Ming Dynasty, the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci finished the third in a series of world maps he and Chinese courtly scholars had begun drafting, engraving, and printing since almost two decades prior.^[3] The Kun Yu Wan Guo Quan Tu, orComplete Map of the Myriad Nations, came to reality in the city of Zhao Qing with the encouragement of the Wang Pan, one of the cleric’s scholarly friends, and the help of Chinese Christian converts.^[4] Engraved by the Chinese cartographer, mathematician, and astronomer Li Zhi Zao and printed by Zhang Wen Tao of Hangzhou, the map combined European and Chinese geographical data, techniques, and world-views.^[5] The work depicts Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and a disproportionate Antarctica straggling the southern hemisphere. Representing the culmination of many waves of knowledge transfer, not only did the map series introduce the American continents and newly invented names for Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Complete Map of Myriad Nations also included information on the western reaches of the Ming domain that had been collected in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Chinese explorers. The map also was the first in the Chinese tradition of cartography to use a grid system that corresponded to circles of longitude and latitude.^[6] One template for the form and projection of Ricci’s maps was Abraham Ortelius’s 1570 Typus Orbis Terrarum, itself the contemporary culmination of sixteenth-century European cartography.^[4][7]

Rich in textual information, the map includes deliberations on cosmography, multiple prefaces by the map’s various artisans, descriptions of continents and nations, and positations on the nature of the work itself. Ricci wrote, in a preface south of the Tropic of Capricorn, that the viewer is enabled “to travel about, as it were, while reclining at ease in his own study. Lo! To be able to scan all the countries of the world without going out of doors.”^[8]

This same preface ends with a personal, almost wistful dedication:

Once I thought learning was a multifold experience and I would not refuse to travel [even] ten thousand Li to be able to question wise men and visit celebrated countries. But how long is a man’s life? It is certain that many years are needed to acquire a complete science, based on a vast number of observations: and that’s where one becomes old without the time to make use of this science. Is this not a painful thing? And this is why I put great store by [geographical] maps and history: history for fixing [these observations], and maps for handing them on [to future generations]. Respectfully written by the European Matteo Ricci on 17 August 1602.^[8]

Matteo Ricci was born in the city of Macerata in present-day Italy in the year 1553. His early studies were pursued there under a secular priest and later at a local Jesuit college. At the age of seventeen, Ricci was sent to Rome by his father where he engaged in a study of law for three years until he joined the Society of Jesus in 1571. After six years studying philosophy and theology at the Jesuit College in Rome, he decided to join the India mission and arrived in Goa on September 13th, 1578. There he remained for four years, lecturing on theology and rhetoric until he was assigned to the China mission.^[9] Ricci began to study Chinese language and customs in Macau in 1582, gaining the basic knowledge that, after entering the Mainland a year later, would set him on the path to extraordinary respect and influence in the upper levels of the Ming Dynasty.^[10]

Fluent in court Chinese and one of the first Western masters of the Confucian texts, Ricci and those who followed him were agents for the direct and deliberate transfer of scientific and mathematical knowledge between China and Europe.^[4] Under the notion that nonbelievers of an educated or courtly class would be drawn to Christianity upon seeing the fruits of its civilization, Ricci and his compatriots translated such works as those by Euclid and Kepler, compiled dictionaries, produced atlases, and maps.^[9][4] Ricci also established the first Catholic Church in Nanjing, and published Chinese-language discourses on Christian theology.^[11] Ricci and his colleagues are among the only persons of foreign birth to have ever had their biographies appended to the official court histories of the Ming dynasty.^[12]

Ricci’s motives in leading the drafting of these maps were no doubt complex. As an agent for the Society of Jesus, and a missionary later to be called “The Apostle of China”, he certainly saw the work serving the ultimate end of promulgating a Christian worldview to the Chinese. Yet also, as a well-respected foreign scholar in the midst of an intellectual society ruled by Confucianism, any vision he projected had to agree with his colleagues on a basis of reason alone. The Jesuit stratagem of conversion by demonstration of superior knowledge resulting from the Christian belief system, particularly in this context, held something akin to the “science as handmaiden” thought widely articulated in thirteenth century Europe. This sentiment was that greater knowledge of the order of nature, gained by reasoning and observation, could serve an ideal means to a fuller understanding and conviction to God. On the postulation that reason could only move toward faith, proponents of “science as handmaiden” suggested that if heathens could first be met on a philosophical level, they could only continue to move toward an inexorable conclusion cosanguine with Christian faith.^[13]

Ricci reflected on the drafting of the 1602 map in writings directed to his contingents in Europe:

This was most useful work that could be done at that time to dispose China to give credence to the things of our holy Faith. . . . Their conception of the greatness of their country and of the insignificance of all other lands made them so proud that the whole world seemed to them savage and barbarous compared with themselves; it was scarcely to be expected that they, while entertaining this idea, would heed foreign masters.

^[11]

Thus, it becomes clear that Ricci’s understanding of the Chinese sciences was the very force behind the Apostle’s mission. Reaching deeper into the canon of the ancient civiliation, Ricci perhaps hoped to tie together its lose ends and ambiguities in an immaculate knot of Christian, European conception. More complex than simple colonialism, it is likely that Ricci and his followers thought of themselves as shepherds of Truth, extrapolating a great civilization toward the glory of Christiandom.

An examination of the the Chinese cartographic tradition is in order, as a way of understanding the true significance of the first merger with the Western tradition that Ricci’s maps were. The former tradition can be said to have begun in the fifth century B.C. with the compilation of the Yu Gong. This chapter of the Shu Jing (Book of History), was written as a geographical ‘inventory’ of the Zhou dynasty. It contains detailed verbal descriptions of the rivers, valleys, mountains, flora, and fauna of nine concentric ‘provinces’ radiating outward from the center of the empire.^[14] This was the beginning of a scientific tradition of map-making in the China, which developed into a visual enterprise during the early years of the first century A.D. During this time, Zhang Heng, a polymath civil servant under the Eastern Han Dynasty, developed a rectangular grid system that remained in use through to the time of the Jesuits’ arrival fourteen centuries later^[15]. The tradition was built upon by Pei Xiu, who during the Dong Jin Dynasty (265-420 A.D.) developed principles for a quantitative cartography based on angular proportions and graduated divisions, writing that when the grid is “properly applied, then the straight and the curved, the near and the far, can conceal nothing of their form from us.”^[16][17]

Many texts about cartography — Pei Xiu’s included — have survived to the present, while the maps from which they were immediately informed have not.^[18] One great map of the period between Pei Xiu and the introduction of Western cartography is the Yu Ji Tu.^[19] While it is likely that many equally remarkable maps existed during and before when the Yu Ji Tu was carved in the year 1137, this one remains well-preserved in a three-foot square stone engraving. It employs a grid system wherein each square is equivalent to 100 li. Compared to maps of its age in other cultures, its accurate depictions of coastlines, inland river systems, etc. are unparalleled.^[20] Its place in the unbroken tradition of Chinese quantitative cartography is clear, being influenced by past maps and influencing future ones.^[21] This was before the field benefited from intellectual consolidation under the rule of the Mongols, contact with the Arab world, and the Ming-sanctioned voyages of Admiral Zheng He in the fifteenth century.^[22]

At the time that Ricci’s first map, the Yu Di Shan Hai Quan Tu was being drafted in 1584, European cartography — like many aspects of culture and science — was itself undergoing marked changes. Abraham Ortelius had only fourteen years prior published the monumental Theatrum Orbis Terrarum atlas, a copy of which Ricci gave to the Ming court in Beijing in 1601.^[10] Gerrard Mercator’s famous cylindrical orthomorphic projection had revolutionized cartography in 1538, when it made it possible to show the spherical earth on a flat surface in a way that preserved the spatial connections between points, a property vital for navigation.^[23] A century and a half prior to Ricci’s map, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal advanced the state of portolan sea navigation charts by reviving geographical ideas, including the grid and coordinate system, that had been used more than a thousand years before by Ptolemy.^[23] The early portalan charts, in turn, had appeared out of necessity around the year 1300. At that time, they presented an alternative view from the types of maps that had prevailed in Europe since the rise of the Byzantine Empire in the early 4th century. These medieval religious cosmographs, known as T-O or wheel maps, all placed Jerusalem in a prominent location, with an outer ocean encompassing the continents, usually Europe, Asia and Africa, but also sometimes Eden or an “unknown Austral region.”^[24] As the T-O maps came to dominate European cosmography, they obscured a tradition of quantitative, grid based cartography that had begun with Eratosthenes in the second century B.C. ^[25]

Ricci’s maps were the first direct link between the long cartographic traditions of two civilizations. The Complete Map of Myriad Nations, in both its striking visual form and eminent historical significance, belies a story that may be told in many ways for many purposes. While one story casts its manufacture as a moment of glorious unification, another might tell the forging of a semiotic Trojan Horse. Yet, as with the intentions of Ricci himself, the most accurate narrative is one fraught with complex ambiguities.

In a depiction of the world, nothing less than the world is at stake. A person compelled by a map for what it asserts itself to be has to set aside questioning the knowledge of its maker (dare we say “creator”?), and allow the work to stand for the grandest space that is the sphere of the earth. If Matteo Ricci was a figure of “two personas” — the missionary and the scholar — the 1602 map must have been a product of predominately one or the other. From a modern secular perspective, it could be feared that such a work may amount to nothing more than a promotional tool for European colonialism, a vessel to plant a concept into the sociological mind of the Chinese. Yet there is also the temptation by some to say thatThe Complete Map of Myriad Nations represents a cooperation of two civilizations, the story of science and commerce bridging once-impossible gaps and allowing different groups to realize each others’ essential humanity while also ascertaining a greater level of universal truth. It seems unlikely that true circumstances would yield to the yarn-weaving of either color. Instead, ambiguities in the intentions of the actors of the period, the uses of cartography in Europe and China, and the effect of the map make such simplifications difficult.

Firstly, the cleric’s two personas, more like elements (persona originates from the Greek meaning mask), were perhaps not so separate. In fact, there is reason to suppose that it was his devotion to the Church that made his intimacy with Chinese civilization possible. On this point, some have accused Ricci’s primary Chinese-language theological treatise, The True Nature of the Lord of Heaven, of reconciling Confucianism with Christianity to the point that neither is recognizable.^[26] It has been a question as to whether the missionary’s view of his work became so focused on the aspect of fostering greater learning that strict orthodoxy was no longer a concern, or if he developed a perspective through his learning of Chinese civilization whereby what he was writing was orthodox. One historical interpretation of Ricci is that his “primary object was not simply to establish a certain number of Christian communities on the fringes of a hostile society; it was rather to build a Sino-Christian civilization.”^[27] It seems reasonable to suppose that in Ricci’s mind such a civilization, rather than being an identical descendant of European Christendom, would be a unique hybrid that incorporated the rich intellectual achievements of the Middle Kingdom under the banner of a Christian theology. This is consistent with the position of later China-mission Jesuits in the controversy over Chinese Rites that emerged in Vatican late in the mid seventeenth century.^[28]

The possibility that Ricci’s maps were created under the same spirit as The True Nature of the Lord of Heaven is not to be dismissed. Coinciding with the period of counter-reformation that swept the Catholic Church beginning in the 1630s was a period of intense debate regarding liturgical uniformity. Particularly in the case of the China mission, there was argument over the criteria for what a Chinese Christian was. One position held that converts had to renounce all Confucian and other rites in order to be considered true, while the other held that such rites were of a social nature, inextricable from Chinese civilization itself while also not at odds with Christian theology. At the extreme end of the former group were those who supported a tabla rasa approach to conversion similar to that pursued by the conquistadors of the New World, who sought to eradicate the entire culture of the converts along with what might be supposed to be religious beliefs.^[29] This was also the opposite of the philosophy employed by Jesutical missions, of which Matteo Ricci has been portrayed as an exemplary practitioner. An archbiship in the mid twentieth century reflected that “The Ricci method of converting the pagan is reminiscent of Christ among the Doctors in the temple and of Paul in the midst of the learned Greeks on the Acropolis.”^[9] Those who would have accused Ricci being too conciliatory would have likely also not been in favor of Chinese Rites on a broader scale.

The idea of making a map combining Chinese and European cartographic ideas was not Ricci’s own, but a suggestion of his Chinese scholarly friend, Wang Pan, later followed by imperial sanction.^[4] The cleric was assisted by Chinese Christian converts, as well as the Chinese geographer, mathematician, and astronomer Li Zhizao who engraved the piece. The map was printed by Zhang Wentao of Hangzhou, who may have also been the official Ming court printer.^[30] This tale of collaboration breaks down the view of Ricci’s map as an object handed down from the West to the East, and instead evokes the narrative of scientific, cross-cultural friendship.

Was Ricci aware of where he stood at the edge of history? Warnings have been written regarding comparative histories of Eastern and Western science, but this question does not need concern why events unfolded certain ways and not others.^[31] Rather than asking why quantitative cartography in China developed constantly from the first century on, while in Europe it gave way to wheel maps just six centuries after its inception, it is more relevant here to wonder how these facts came together in Ricci’s works. Needham speculates that perhaps the modern development of quantitative grid cartography in Europe is actually of Chinese origin by way of the Levant.^[32]. If this were true, it would certainly add to the situational irony of Ricci’s maps. More than that, however, this understanding would make it less possible to see Ricci’s works as the impinging of a foreign world-view on a people, and more possible to see them as contributions to an existing tradition.

Where and how a document physically travels through history can tell of the narratives it evokes, or the evolution of its historical interpretation. The recent acquisition of one of the only six copies of the Complete Map of Myriad Nations by a corporate philanthropic organization devoted to the history of trade and commerce suggests what kind of present-day conditions it will serve to affirm for the near future. Yet this same transfer of ownership has enabled the map to be reproduced digitally for a project of an intergovernmental body to share with Internet users. A non-constructivist, independently researched interpretation of the Map of Myriad Nations reveals Matteo Ricci as nothing less than a remarkable figure, though firmly remaining a product of his time. The map, supported by the needs and desires of myriad actors and artisans, can be nothing other than a collective effort. Not foist upon anyone by anyone, it nonetheless reflects the philosophy of Ricci’s China mission — a philosophy that takes into account a deep respect for Chinese civilization and scholarship. As the chief cartographer of the map, Ricci held his responsibilities to revealing the best ascertainable truth well, by the merging of two ancient traditions into a single, new, vision of the world.

Dewey Square Drawings will be a series of one hundred 9×9 inch mixed-media drawings of a single public square in Boston’s financial district. Begun in November 2011, 16 drawings are completed to date. Made using a variety of materials, techniques, and methods of observation, each drawing will represent one approach to seeing the city.

Before October 3, 2011, when citizens of Boston filled the square with a tent city as part of the Occupy Movement, the place-name “Dewey Square” was rarely used. The public space outside of One Financial Center, if referred to at all, was known as one part of the larger series of parks managed by the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Throughout the sixty-day occupation, Dewey Square became a focal point for the city, and even an unlikely home to those living in the “model society” that had sprung up in its small confines. Today, many of those involved in Occupy Boston still think of Dewey Square as the land where its activist culture began.

Dewey Square Drawings will explore the potential of this public space in particular, and by extension all public space. Their process will both examine, and build from, the sudden transformation of Dewey Square from a featureless, “a-political” space to a very legibly “political” space of an international activist movement.

The Drawings, now being made as the Rose Kennedy Greenway restores the space to its former state, will begin from the premise that politics have not left Dewey Square.

Hot-Cold Navigator will be a cross-platform smartphone app that will offer an alternative to standard turn-by-turn GPS navigation. Instead of describing how to get from the present location to the desired destination, the app will provide visual and auditory information about whether the user is getting “hotter” (closer to destination) or “colder” (veering away).

The purpose of using such an app would be to allow a person to sense the abstract, geographic distance to a particular location without having to follow strict, discrete directions to get there. This design could allow a certain level of rambling not permitted by conventional GPS navigators.

Originally written and distributed as a series of emails with attachments, Beijing Updates combines text, video, and remote performance to relate experiences that really did happen, but whose truth could only be told as multimedia fiction.

The core of the project consists of four 5-minute videos, featuring original footage shot in various locations in Beijing, China during the summer of 2011. These images (which were captured by smartphone) are accompanied by computer-synthesized audio renderings of emails. These emails were composed specifically for the voice synthesizer, and the videos edited to fit the length of the final audio output.

Two months after the project was initially released on the Internet, an edition of 19 artist books were produced out of cardboard and dental floss to document the project in physical form.

Tiny Tents Task Force “seeks to fill every city with minuscule reminders of Occupy’s continuing presence. Although begun in Boston, Tiny Tents have been seen on 3 continents since December 2011. They appeared in bank ATMs, train stations, book stores, libraries, college campuses, public parks, and in Christmas trees.

The Task Force was initiated by individuals at Occupy Boston immediately following a December 10th, 2012 police raid on the Dewey Square encampment.”

Many of the images on the right are from the Mobius event, while others are from people who have submitted to the Tiny Tent Task Force website at tinytents.tumblr.com.

These fences had appeared around three maintenance covers after residents of Occupy Boston had attempted to use steam from them for heating.

Veolia Environnement S.A. manages the heating system of Boston, Cambridge, and many other cities around the United States and the world.

Can searching for Prospect Street lead us into other times, or at least raise useful questions about how they have passed?

The meaning of zunda is mashed green soybeans. This is known as a local delicacy of Miyagi Prefecture. Zunda rice cakes are sweet and bright green in color. Zunda rice cakes can be made using store-bought rice cakes, so they are very easy to make.

–shejapan.com

Served two food items typical of Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture at Occupy Boston. Three primary events occurred to make this possible:

• Testing cookbook recipes for zunda mochi and kombu maki.
• Two friends from Vermont visiting Boston.
• Over 300 people pitching tents in Boston’s financial district.

This map was included in a waterproof brochure, which was then sewn to garments by participants in a Platform2 workshop at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Each garment contained a maple seed hibernation environment and a message imploring passers-by to “TAKE ME NORTH!”