2018 peter kuper
Peter Kuper
Donald Trump's 20/24 vision sees the world through orange-coloured glasses; bent on serving himself, undermining democracy and laser- focussed on power, money and golf. You can map out where he hopes to see us in the future: deaf, dumb, blind and in his pocket. p
Peter Kuper is a New York City-based cartoonist and illustrator whose work appears all over the map. https://www.peterkuper.com
on some maps stephanie white
What is the project behind any map – the imperial project? the anti-colonial project of the surrealists? the destabilisation project of Trumpism? The exact project is revealed by the relationship of the map to land. There are times for accuracy, the 1:1 measure, and times for hyperbole, distortion, the polished narrative. Trumpworld Map was drawn by Kuper from a series of verbal proclamations and performances meant to destabilise power relations – there is no geography, only potential transactions, and it is to T’s advantage to discredit the target before buying it. This is not geography. As shown in Kuper’s map there is a miasma of weakness, poverty, illness and underdevelopment, ripe for the picking. Classic colonial theory, from Spivak to Said – the very things one fears are projected onto the other to justify annexation; i.e. other races are conniving because you fear being connived. Sexual appetite is exaggerated in the other, rape of women, sodomy, incest, precisely because these things are both suppressed in, and feared by, the coloniser. It is through a failure of imagination that the worst of one’s own culture is projected onto whole societies, cultures, peoples who have no relationship at all to such fevered imagining.
This particular denigration of the other, so close to the coloniser’s dark self is what allows colonisation: You are weak, vice-ridden; We are strong, therefore it is natural that we will take over your underused land. What were the most egregious qualities that would justify a new American Empire destabilising the global world order? They are T’s personal fears and preoccupations: meddlers ingrates Puerto Ricans Jews Arabs commies hoaxers little men security threats (that’s us) foes and the ultimate scatological preoccupation, shitholes
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on site review 42: atlas :: being in place
:: colonial processes
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