On Walls and Borders: Roger Eberhard’s Human Territoriality
By Miriam Edmunds
Between late 2015 and 2019, Swiss artist Roger Eberhard explored the theme of ‘borders’ in a series of photographs. In Human Territoriality, Eberhard examines spatial, man-made and disappeared borders — which, in addition to a political character, can also have a historical and social character — as well as the backgrounds of their disappearance. Human Territoriality was exhibited at Photoforum Pasquart in 2020.
Roger Eberhard’s project was prompted by the 2015/16 American presidential campaign and Donald Trump’s perpetual promises to have a wall built along the US-Mexican border, the aim of which was to reinforce the American-Mexican political border with a physical barricade. There is much debate about how much of this promised wall was effectively built during President Trump’s term.[1] What is clear, however, is that Trump’s intended wall was to keep unwanted people (and drugs) out of America. It is a segregation of one nation and an exclusion of the other. A man-made separation between ‘rich’ and ‘poor.’
In addition to the political arena, physical walls and borders are also often used in artistic confrontations to draw attention to political issues. A famous example of this is Running Fence by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose aim was to make democratic background processes visible: in 1976, the 39.4 km long monumental installation made of nylon fabric, which stretched from north of San Francisco to the Pacific Ocean near Bodega Bay, was realised. This wall was intended to illustrate the political-democratic processes that had to take place long before the actual construction of the wall in order to make the project feasible at all: Debates, hearings and collaborations.[2] The construction of the fence took 42 months. Dismantling began just two weeks after completion. It was not the finished fence that was the main work, but the enormous effort that went into building it. Similar to Running Fence, Roger Eberhard’s photo series Human Territoriality also addresses historical, political and ecological background processes that led to walls and borders being abandoned or moved. At the same time, Eberhard has a very personal interest in borders. He is aware of how easily he himself crosses borders: ‘I have been very aware of how easily I crossed so many borders while working on different art projects while other people must risk their lives to only cross one border.’ It is a privilege to be able to easily cross physical borders — especially national borders — because borders do not separate all people equally. Thus, one border in turn creates different borders within a group of people: People who cross the border easily and people who are denied. According to the Henley Passport Index, Swiss are among the top 10 most privileged people in the world when it comes to easy border crossings.[3]
Eberhard’s photo series began near the present-day border between England and Scotland: Hadrian’s Wall. In 84 AD, Britannia became a Roman province, albeit without a fixed border against the Celtic client kings in Wales and central England.[4] Celtic incursions into Britannia moved Emperor Hadrian to seal off the Roman part of the island. Around 122 AD, he built Hadrian’s Wall across the island at its narrowest point, from Carlisle on the Solway Firth in the west to Newcastle upon Tyne in the east. The longest part of the wall was originally 2.3 metres thick and 3.5 metres high. The shorter, western part was secured by two ramparts of earth on either side of a ditch.[5]
Compared to Eberhard’s other photographic subjects, Hadrian’s Wall was easy to find, as many physical remains of the rampart have survived to this day and the border itself is well documented in the sources. However, this was not always the case and one of Eberhard’s greatest challenges was to determine the correct location of a vanished border. To do this, he used detailed research on specific regions and time periods, as well as historical maps and GPS data. ‘For a lot of the photographs I was in very remote areas where I rarely met any locals. When I photographed a very specific site, like a ruin or a house or a landmark it was obviously much easier. In some cases I also had old photos from articles that helped me find a spot. […] In Bangladesh it was really difficult to find the exact location of where the border shifted. I had to ask many farmers in the area which in turn asked different farmers and in the end we were quite a big group looking for an old border marker which proved that we were in the right place.’
Eberhard found the border shift between Italy and Switzerland, which can be traced back to recent ecological changes in the glaciers caused by climate change, particularly fascinating. ‘The ski station that used to be in Italy but due to the melting glaciers now lies in Switzerland [Zermatt, Furggsattel] is still fascinating to me and a good example of how fluid and ephemeral borders are.’ The transfer of territory went almost unnoticed by the public. There was no conflict between Switzerland and Italy.[6] The shift of the former border between North and South Vietnam, however, which preceded the bloody Vietnam War, was different: ‘the one that stands out the most is the Ben Hai River in Vietnam. It marked the border between North and South Vietnam during the partition of the country. There the contrast between the serenity of the landscape and the images of terror and suffering which this border dispute caused was so strong, it made a lasting impression on me.’
Through his project Human Territoriality, Roger Eberhard wants to question the (Western) idea of the immutability of man-made borders and, through his images, encourages us to think about the background to the creation and dissolution of borders: ‘I hope that my photographs emphasize the transcience and arbitrariness of borders. I see this project as my personal reaction to the recent rise of nationalism around the globe and the continuous construction of border fences and walls which is happening at an even greater rate than during the Cold War. If people visiting the exhibition take away that no border is set in stone and that the cartographical puzzle of our world will keep changing, even in the near future, that would be wonderful.’
The exhibition Human Territoriality was presented at Photoforum Pasquart (Biel, Switzerland) from 19 September 2020 to 17 January 2021, and closed by the Swiss government as part of the efforts against the pandemic from 24 October to 15 December 2020 and from 20 December 2020 to 17 January 2021. The book was published by Edition Patrick Frey in March 2020.
[1] Vgl. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46824649 [Stand: 5.11.2020].
[2] Vgl. https://www.artforum.com/print/201704/the-politics-of-christo-and-jeanne-claude-s-running-fence-67188 [Stand: 10.12.2020].
[3] Vgl. https://www.henleypassportindex.com/passport [Stand: 22.12.2020].
[4] Ein König, der einem anderen Staat unterstand und von diesem als König eingesetzt wurde.
[5] Vgl. Demandt, Alexander: Grenzen. Geschichte und Gegenwart, Berlin 2020, S. 273.
[6] Vgl. https://www.beobachter.ch/umwelt/landesgrenze-und-sie-bewegt-sich-doch [Stand: 21.12.2020].
