Ian Boal on Drawing Power: Mark Lombardi and the Cartography of Capital
By Catherine MacLennan
Dr. Ian Boal, editor of Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, was in Vancouver for a couple of lectures, one at SFU on biotechnology and the privatization of life forms and another at the Vancouver Art Gallery discussing Mark Lombardi (1951 - 2000), an American artist whose intricate graphite and pencil drawings map out the "the skullduggery of global capitalism."
Lombardi became interested in the shady power networks running capitalism during the lengthy Watergate hearings, a rare public airing of the corporate-criminal power network. Having worked as an archivist and librarian, Lombardi plied the methods of his métier, obsessively going through the indexes of expose-type books, writing down names, and noting who else they linked up with on index cards, eventually compiling 15,000 index cards. This obsessive note-taking provided the source material for his drawings drawn from, according to Boal a "God's eye view", which he created on huge pieces of paper spread out on the floor. Boal placed in Lombardi's drawings in a context that is both visual and socio-political: a series of diagrams, graphics, and cartography that demonstrate relationships. This included a photo of Robert Kennedy pointing out the networks and connections of various mafia figures at a commission in the 1950s (a photo in Lombardi's collection); a text book "sociogram" of interpersonal relationships; Oliver North's Iran-Contra sketch of connecting figures; a map of Napoleon's army's march into Russia; and Hans Haacke's "Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time System, as of May 1, 1971."
This work by Haacke, which revealed the dishonest slumlord operations of Manhattan in photos, lists of names, maps and charts was suddenly cancelled six weeks before it was due to open at the Guggenheim. The authorities were also interested in Lombardi's work - the FBI visited the Whitney museum a couple of weeks after Sept 11, 2001 when it was discovered that in one of his network drawings Osama Bin Laden and George Bush appeared just two inches apart.
For more on Mark Lombardi, who Boal describes as "an artist mapping out crime scenes on the largest scale," see:http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html.