A Cartography in 25 Movements is a data-visualisation film interpreting a century of spatial, historical, and climate data about the Winter Olympic Games through a figure skating choreography. The project draws on datasets spanning all 25 editions of the Games (1924–2026), encoding environmental and statistical variables on venues and national participations, and the growing reliance on artificial snow-making and climate-control technologies.
Behind the apparently harmonious performance of skating, the visualisation reveals how the Games have steadily expanded their geographical and environmental footprint—extending the spatial scale and altitude range where events take place, and following the accelerating patterns of climate change by depending on engineered environments.
The talk will present the research and design behind the work: from the collection and analysis of data to the development of a visual language that bridges cartographic notation, choreographic scores, and data visualisation. It will discuss how the collaboration with two figure skaters allowed the datasets to be embodied and performed rather than merely visualised—turning the ice rink into a surface for inscription, and the body into an instrument of representation.
Developed as a commission for an exhibition, the project proposes a critique of the aesthetics of visualisation and the politics of mega-events in the age of the climate crisis. By interpreting data through the medium of performance, the work embraces the indeterminacy, imprecision, and ambiguity inherent in climate data itself—an embodied visualisation that, through the unpredictability of a choreography, attunes to the uncertainty of the phenomena it represents.