Firing up map thinking: Music video meta-maps

In this chapter I propose three music videos as case studies, considering them distinct ‘meta-maps’. I draw this idea from a seminal work by Stoichita (1996; but see also the concept of ‘metapicture’ in Mitchell, 1994), who wrote about the motif of ‘paintings within paintings’—including the more specific motif of maps within paintings—in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European art. Interestingly, Stoichita viewed this motif as an exercise of intertextuality (or, we could say, of intermediality): an auto-reflection on different modes of representation (or media) that produces self-aware images. These ‘meta-paintings’ are considered by Stoichita as theoretical objects, works on and with the image, as well as interpretive acts. Inspired by this intermedial possibility, in what follows I perform three interpretive acts considering music videos as theoretical objects with the potential to provoke meditations about cartography. None of the videos present to the audience performing artists; rather, we could say that they present performing maps, which take the stage and are broadcast while showing different configurations and modes of their existence. These three interpretive acts of music videos’ cartographic morphings engender three layers of map thinking: a representational (from technical to deconstructive) one, a post-representational (or emergent and practice-based) one and finally a speculative (phenomenological and object-oriented) one.