Uncharted, uncertain, unknown. The new Terra Incognita in the work of Robert Smithson

Abstract

In its obsession to unveil the secret of the world, a multitude of maps have been elaborated by the human kind in the shade of the unknown. The article visits a number of cartographies that have addressed the effort of representing uncertain places, and pauses in those related works that have subverted the historical order in which the unexplored was a void in between the known world’s sites. Robert Smithson’s artworks are submitted to a second reading, stablishing coincidences to the old cartographic tradition and discovers a series of connections between historical maps, art and certain interests of architects and their way to understand places. This interpretation suggests a critique to the dominant scientism in almost all of the facets of mankind lives, even in those related to the realm of the uncertain. In an unprovable yet undeniable displacement of the currently extinct Terra Incognita towards his maps, lays the key to understanding some aspects of the landscape reality of our time.