iiĪs Bay's statement attests, during World War II, the American public became increasingly concerned with international relations, a trend that marked a significant departure from the preceding two decades of isolationism and prevalent geographical indifference. all about us people are tossing about such names as Guadalcanal, Attu, Pantelleria, and other tiny places with the greatest of ease and familiarity, while in restaurants we find armchair strategists capable of sketching very credible maps of the Soviet Union on napkins and even spelling such names as Dnepropetrovsk and Simferopol correctly. with a global war in progress and American fighting men stationed in more than fifty countries or colonies. In 1943, cartographer Helmuth Bay commented on the growing interest in world geography among regular Americans, remarking that: I present below a brief overview of major trends in cartography and topography during the 1940s, which aims not only to uncover the specifics of wartime geographical imagination, but also to provide some historical context for understanding our own conception of global space and its symbolic representation. In the face of the global war and its destruction, images of landscape became as much of a contested ground as the land itself, not only visualizing the progress of the war, but also embodying and challenging war-time national ideology and international policy. It is tied to the surface of the earth it derives its material sustenance from it, and moves purposefully over it." i Yet for the majority of Americans at the time, the war was advancing not in real space, but on the pages of their newspapers and magazines, in the waves of radio addresses, and in the letters of their loved ones, fighting overseas. In August 1939, just a few days before the German invasion of Poland, Time magazine reprinted the words of the Nazi geographer Ewald Banse: "War.is above all things a geographical phenomenon. Artbound is following the draw-ins and publishing related materials as the project develops. Incendiary Traces is holding a series of site-specific draw-ins taking place across Southern California, as well as collecting related historical and contemporary materials. Incendiary Traces is a conceptually driven, community generated art project conceived by artist Hillary Mushkin.
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