In Free the Map, a new publication by Henk van Houtum, traditional maps are challenged and new cartographic stories and representations are discussed and encouraged.
A map is a visual story of the world. It feeds our imagination and shapes our view of the world. A standard atlas, however, predominantly tells only one story, that of the nation-state. It depicts a world in which people are uniformly packed into national containers, enclosed by borders, and in which migration is often represented as threatening invasion arrows.
Free the Map goes beyond this narrow, state-centric cartography. The book argues for a new cartographic story: a Hermes – the grandson of Atlas and the god of mobility and human connections. To this end, it discusses several visually compelling, alternative cartographic representations of borders and migration.

With contributions by: Rodrigo Bueno Lacy, Tofe Al-Obaidi, Catalogtree, Yishay Garbasz, Susanne Khalil Yusef, Nicolas Lambert, Sarah Mekdjian, Ruben Pater, Philippe Rekacewicz, Malkit Shoshan, Jonas Staal, Irene Stracuzzi, Annelys de Vet, Jasmijn Visser, Denis Wood