Parallel Atlas, 38 00N: A Transboundary Cartography for Korea's Evolving Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
North American Cartographic Information Society
NACIS XIX - Williamsburg, Virginia
October 20-23, 1999
Deborah Natsios
Natsios Young Architects
251 West 89th Street
New York, NY 10024-1739
dn@pipeline.com
(212) 431-6331
This series of digital mapworks explores the changing cartographic identity of the Cold-War's last prominent relic: the ideological boundary established by the Korean War's 1953 Armistice Agreement whose uninhabited no-man's-landscapes have unexpectedly reverted to a de facto nature sanctuary in the past 45 years--harboring rare flora and fauna, including some of Northeast Asia's most endangered migratory species.
While the DMZ continues to be a centerpiece of US security preoccupations--framed by one million anti-personnel landmines and two million battle-ready troops--inaccessibility has allowed the 4-km wide, 250-km-long corridor's damaged ecosystems to rehabilitate and flourish. Recent proposals by international biodiversity and wildlife specialists are competing with the DMZ's rhetoric of violence, calling for the transformation the fortified corridor into a system of protected transboundary bioreserves.
New mappings of the DMZ offer unique insights into the production of contemporary narratives about nature and culture. Parallel Atlas surveys transboundary conditions underpinning the DMZ's disputed cartographic status--hybrid sites whose evolving biogeographic identity is threaded with the narrative text of competing map legends: the interwoven discourses of geopolitics, entomology, culture, memory.