| Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Karen O'Rourke

Emeritus Professorat Jean Monnet University
Rayol-Canadel,
France
Focus area: Architecture, Art History, Art Theory, Critical Theory, Cultural Practices, Social Practice, Digital Art, New Media, Generative Practices, Generative Art, Geography, Geo-Locative, Mapping, Net Art, Performance Art, Theater Studies, Photography, Site Specific, Place Making, Social Media, Social Networks

My work explores the relationship between art practice and the concepts of network, archive and territory in projects such as City Portraits (1989-92), Paris Réseau / Paris Network (1993-2000), archiving as art (1997-2000), A Map Larger Than the Territory (2002-2004), Eavesdroplets (2006), Partially Buried University (2008-2010) and Artists Bearing Gifts (2013–). The more than 50 research articles I have published include a recent piece on Project Row Houses, which will be the subject of my next book. My writing has found a home mainly in scholarly publications like Leonardo, Figures de l’art and antiAtlas Journal, but I have also made brief forays into narrative nonfiction and journalism. My first monograph, Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers was published by the MIT Press in 2013. In it, I explore a series of walking/mapping projects by contemporary artists. Some chart “emotional GPS”; some use satellites for creating landscapes made of data –“datascapes”– while others use their legs to do “speculative mapping.” The second, Des arts-réseaux aux dérives programmées : actualité de « l’art comme expérience » (From art networks to programmed drifts: the topicality of “art as experience,” 2011), was my habilitation thesis. Earlier publications include Paris Réseau/Paris Network (2000), a bilingual CD-Rom title. I taught for 29 years at l’École des Arts de La Sorbonne (Pantheon-Sorbonne University) where I was a Maître de conferences (Associate Professor). I took a position as a Professor at Jean Monnet University (Saint-Etienne) in 2014. I have been an emeritus Professor since 2017.

Journal Articles:
Special Section: Artmedia VIII Selected Symposium Papers

Mapping the Database: Trajectories and Perspectives

August 2004
Walking and Mapping
Artists as Cartographers