issue 47 • spring 2026
Edited by Christina Contandriopoulos et Valeria Téllez Niemeyer
Unlike official maps, which are inseparable from power, counter-mapping refers to alternative, citizen-led, Indigenous, activist, or artistic initiatives that challenge the established order. While the term counter-mapping has been widely adopted by geographers to address issues of boundary-making, territorial management, and governance, it has received relatively little attention as a practice in its own right. This issue of Intermédialités seeks to address this gap by examining the ways in which art history and media studies can contribute to the field of counter-mapping. Maps are approached as images endowed with histories and agencies of their own. Beyond representation, an intermedial approach makes it possible to understand the full range of conditions that shape the production, circulation, and efficacy of maps, while also attending to the tensions, fractures, and forms of resistance that run through them.
The articles in this volume contribute to broadening the definition of counter-mapping without necessarily drawing strict boundaries around cartographic practices. They explore the historical, projective, formal, and utopian qualities of counter-maps through analyses that might also be described as oppositional, critical, dissident, or radical. The aim is thus to situate reflection on cartography within contemporary approaches in art history and media studies that revise established canons by turning to minor visual corpora, “counter-archives,” and “counter-corpora.”