Didda Hjartardottir

“Snippet”

Staðsetning / Location: Rockville

The Artwork “Snippet” is part of a project on maps that has earlier seen two other works. The map project is based on the London A-Z.

The first? How ,Why, When? 2003. A series of three oil paintings based on a small area of the London A-Z , close to where I live.

Using the prime colours, each painting has one of these as it?s main colour so you have a yellow, blue and red painting.

My second take on maps ?Box maps? The same details are blown up further and jigsaw puzzles are pasted on the inside or outside of three cardboard boxes. The puzzles giving colour and shape to the maps. This is where the two-dimensional map takes on a three-dimensional quality.

The third .The one I have made for Project Patterson “Snippet” 2006. A tiny bit of the street area around Highbury Corner is blown up to full size 1:1. What can be seen on this little bit of map, is letters that spell Highbury and underneath it Isl. A few lines that indicate parts of symbols for the overground as well as the underground stations and a star, symbol for the Post office. The whole area is shaped as an irregular elongated triangle

Of Exactitude in Science

.. . . In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province.

In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned

it to the Rigors of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.

>From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda

>From A Universal History of Infamy (1972) by Jorge Luis Borges

The idea is to unite two different areas.

A small piece of street area as depicted in the London A-Z invades Icelandic ground, conversely a small area of ground in Iceland shapes a London Street map The ground causes flat even streets to land in a ditch and roll over the foundations of houses and roads in a haphazard way. The map that is man?s attempt to move the physical reality of his surroundings onto a piece of paper. The map interprets big areas and omits as much as it exaggerates .The ground gives to the flat paper that represents a street map a physical reality, a new body. While a battle is fought between the map and the earth, the mind and the body. They take on each others image.

The possibility to locate the work in Rockville adds to it another

Dimension. A year ago I came to a deserted Rockville and saw what was then left over from the American Base?s former Radar station. At that time, Rockville was like a ghost town.

A short while later Rockville was demolished, but the foundations of the houses were left standing. Standing in rows the foundations call to mind enormous gravestones of a lost civilization.

The deserted streets surround the houses with lines painted on them for guidance and empty car parking spaces. A few windswept fir trees grow here and there and seem to hang around as though inhabitants lost in thought over whether to leave the place or whether to stay. Rockville has natural beauty, on days when the weather is bright one can see from this lonely windy heath the distant mountains and out to sea.

Few places could be more symbolic for the departure of the American base from Icelandic ground than what is left of Rockville to date.

The making of the Artwork

The directions of the map coincide with those of Rockville i.e. North is North Sizes are measured and marked with strings, sticks and stones. Lines are painted on the ground with a water-soluble paint thinned with water. The size of the whole area where it is widest and longest is Approximately 202 meters by 230 meters.

I work like a blind person.

At the beginning, I have difficulty connecting with the work as I am unable to step back a few meters to get an overview.

All I see is lines.

The size of the letters surprises me and causes me to wander whether the work is somehow an expression of megalomania.

But almost immediately I experience the work as an opposite, I am the ant tiny and powerless in the expanse of the earth.

Everything keeps shifting and I don’t know which side I am on.

Am I Gulliver in the land of the Lillitputs or Gulliver in the Land of

Giants.

As time goes by, I form a closer connection to the work. It is funny to be able to make a six meter mistake.

When it comes to the letter b I enjoy feeling a resonance with the making of the Box maps. As it covers ditches and uneven surfaces. Finally while making the letter s I experience joy when trying to connect the upper and the lower hook of the letter in a convincing way. I discover the best way to do this is by running the distance between the two. Thereby using the whole body as a replacement for the hand to make the swoop.

It is a strange feeling to have completed the work and yet not seen it as a whole.

The weather has a great impact when one is working outdoors and I find out as the days pass that Rockville today is a very popular place for dog owners as well as the owners of motorbikes.

The future is bright.