Starting with the topos in the Aristotelian physics, German phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels delimits the major stages in Western spatial thought. As he asserts, the succession of “topomachies” conceals the fact that every topology has its own blind spot: the place from where it is enunciated. To describe this blind spot, Waldenfels suggests reconsidering the classical notion of “atopia”

The neurosciences altered how we understand perception, consciousness, intuition, and reasoning. As one of the advocates of a transformation of art history into image science, Barbara Stafford invites us to take a close look at a field that remains terra incognita for the humanities: the functioning of the brain.

In classical Greece, India was thought of as a fairy land at the end of the world where strange creatures, exotic plants and legendary animals dwelled. In 327 B.C., Alexander the Great sets out for India, turning this virtual space into an instrument of political propaganda.

Art historian Meinrenken invites us on a tour through the adventures of early cartography where he recounts for us, among other things, how the name “America” came to a brief existence on Martin Waldseemüller’s world map in 1507, before disappearing again in the edition of 1516.

In 1922, a young bachelor from Eton embarked for Burma where he was to serve as Imperial Police Officer for five years. This little known period in George Orwell's life crucially impacted his determination to denounce any kind of imperialism through writing. A journey through Burma on Orwells footprints ironically reveals a country akin to Orwell's anti-totalitarian novels.

Neither pure logic nor mere metaphysics, the Ars demonstrativa published in 1283 by the Catalan philosopher Ramon Lull was supposed to offer a visual scheme where all known and yet unknown wisdom could fit in. Mónica Farkas retells the story of this ambitious project and its reenactment by contemporary artists such as Jasia Reichardt and Ramón Dachs.

US artist Robert Smithson provokes a dis-placement of art, experimenting both with unoccupied territories in which he places his land art as well as creating "non-sites" within the instituted art world. The relationship between these two spaces must be thought, as Laurence Corbel argues, in terms of a cartography of such artistic dimension which has neither a centre nor a periphery.