Bodies and maps, display the habitat of the contagion

The cartography of the contagion is configured not as a form of representation of space but as a model of knowledge of lived space, of a habitat. The recent pandemic has relaunched two forms of visualization, dashboards and remote-sensing images. The first, daily widespread and now familiar, are an inscription device, allowing you to view relevant elements in reference to a specific topic declining them in a local, regional, national or international geolocation. Remote sensing images are a complex form of visualization and have a dimension of surveillance and authority. How does this cartography allow us to think about the infected world? Dashboards and mobility maps render an idea of a space changed, less sure, and in continuous transformation, introducing an opaque dimension into surrounded environment. The result is a disoriented gaze we have on reality and the landscape. Powerful satellite imagery, using the pre- and post-event aerial imaging method that is a recurring tool for disaster monitoring and mapping, makes us understand our habitat as dramatically changed. In this perspective, the aerial, detached, objective and explicitly non-human point of view has promoted a great distance between us and the environment.