Imaginary geography

A gremlin, or a senior moment, or simple carelessness, put a wrong city in a subject line of a message to a group (that shall remain nameless, but you know who you are) ... and I have offended people who live in any or all of the places mentioned in the body of the message. Yes, that's complicated to figure out ... and I have no excuse for slipping up in this way ... and people have every right to complain ...

It probably won't stop me from doing the same thing again sometime in the future. Moments get more senior all the time, and the gremlins are always with us.

Silver lining is that my geographical non-savvy, in conjunction with the "folded maps" project that remains hidden from my increasingly frantic search, brought the phrase "imaginary geography" to mind - as a title for a quilt (or painting?).

Searching for images on the internet, as you do, found several inspirations:

And with it "the hyper-architecture of desire" (via)

An Atlas of Radical Cartography - maps and essays about social issues - "the map is inherently political"

The Land of Oz (via, a blog of imaginary maps)

The serious side (from wikipedia): "The concept of imagined geographies has evolved out of the work of Edward Said, particularly his critique on Orientalism. In this term, "imagined" is used not to mean "false" or "made-up", but rather "perceived". It refers to the perception of space created through certain images, texts or discourses."

Some well-documented imaginary places are here (and elsewhere).

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980, reprinted) covers only places on Earth.

By Erik Demazieres (via)

A "capriccio" by Piranesi (via)