Borders, boundaries, margins, peripheries, frontiers, edges...
These are lines, both literal and figurative, which frame our world; the delineations of our constructions of self. Deliberate, random, natural, contrived, accidental…all have meaning, meanings which shift and alter with time and space. What is irrelevant to one, is profound to another. These are the limits of our being.
The real constantly confronts the imagined. The literal challenges the figurative. Yet they do not necessarily always exist in contradiction with each other. In reality borders, because they are processes intersected by a multiplicity of constructions of difference, are always in flux. Each time they are transversed elements of differentiation they merge, creating new modalities. No construction of internal or external identity can remain ever unchanged.
Fact and fiction…
Fact not fiction…
Fiction not fact…
Fact as fiction…
Fiction as fact…
Them & Us
The Other
Borders symbolically perpetuate meaning, but those meanings shift. Some seek to break across them, some shore themselves up by them, but they are always present. Our daily lives are fundamentally linked to the concept of territoriality, be it physical or metaphorical. Identity politics are an attempt to make sense of an increasingly confusing world. Yet, instead of creating a more secure sense of self, for some the opposite is true. If no labels truly fit then where does one fit in. Where is the community for them to find? Is there a discontinuity between culture and structure?
Of course, borders are also literal, the lines which separate and contain. We are of the space within these lines, branded by accidents at birth. In a world increasingly fractured by labels, borders are now more real than ever, and we retreat within them to hide from the Other.
Borders are crucial to the whole Book of Journeys project, both in their tangible and intangible forms. Each element stems from a contradiction or juxtaposition to a line dividing something from another. But it is also part of it in its own right, an examination of boundaries, autonomy, dependence, division and identity.
These are lines, both literal and figurative, which frame our world; the delineations of our constructions of self. Deliberate, random, natural, contrived, accidental…all have meaning, meanings which shift and alter with time and space. What is irrelevant to one, is profound to another. These are the limits of our being.
The real constantly confronts the imagined. The literal challenges the figurative. Yet they do not necessarily always exist in contradiction with each other. In reality borders, because they are processes intersected by a multiplicity of constructions of difference, are always in flux. Each time they are transversed elements of differentiation they merge, creating new modalities. No construction of internal or external identity can remain ever unchanged.
Fact and fiction…
Fact not fiction…
Fiction not fact…
Fact as fiction…
Fiction as fact…
Them & Us
The Other
Borders symbolically perpetuate meaning, but those meanings shift. Some seek to break across them, some shore themselves up by them, but they are always present. Our daily lives are fundamentally linked to the concept of territoriality, be it physical or metaphorical. Identity politics are an attempt to make sense of an increasingly confusing world. Yet, instead of creating a more secure sense of self, for some the opposite is true. If no labels truly fit then where does one fit in. Where is the community for them to find? Is there a discontinuity between culture and structure?
Of course, borders are also literal, the lines which separate and contain. We are of the space within these lines, branded by accidents at birth. In a world increasingly fractured by labels, borders are now more real than ever, and we retreat within them to hide from the Other.
Borders are crucial to the whole Book of Journeys project, both in their tangible and intangible forms. Each element stems from a contradiction or juxtaposition to a line dividing something from another. But it is also part of it in its own right, an examination of boundaries, autonomy, dependence, division and identity.
