Borders, Traces and Movements in 7 Revealing Projects
With all of the discussions on the Paris Climate Summit, religion, and national borders, I’m reminded of how we are at once connected and separated by arbitrary and natural boundaries. At the same time, we’re interconnected by our own movements and histories in our everyday lives, creating a diverse mosaic in the urban fabric.
The projects I’ve highlighted below illustrate the different experiences of boundary crossing, past and present.
1. National Borders
Geo-social borders are known conceptually and less as a physical manifestation. Borders are drawn by governmental entities, but not all of them have actual physical barriers. The U.S.-Canada border is punctuated by advertising billboards and governmental signage. In Non-Sign II, commissioned by the United States’ Art in Architecture program, Lead Pencil Studio twisted metal to create a ghost billboard, which provides visual respite from a border crossing oversaturated with signs. Suddenly the void is welcoming.
Down South, artist Ana Teresa Fernandez painted a portion of the border fence, which separates San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, the color of sky in her work Erasing the Border. This transformation facilitates in the ‘disappearance’ of the fence in order to create a more positive experience in the movement of border crossing.
2. Historic Traces
In contrast to erasing the border, artists have also sought to rebuild borders in order to commemorate historical traces. In Delimitations, artists David Taylor and Marcos Ramirez retraced the 1821 U.S.-Mexico border through a series of obelisks that cut through Wyoming, Oklahoma, Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Nevada.
Across the Atlantic, the City of Berlin commissioned WHITEvoid to to create Lichtgrenze, which commemorated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The large scale light installation used 8,000 balloon lights to retrace the location of the former Berlin Wall.
3. Documenting Movements
Some projects aim to illustrate the movements across areas. One day, I was walking on Allen St. in New York, and saw traces of markings on the median. After some internet digging, I found out the traces were from a temporary art installation called Mall-terations from 2010, which traced the neighborhood’s immigration history and ongoing revitalization of the Allen St. Pedestrian Malls. The project is a collective effort between community groups like the Hester Street Collaborative, government agencies, and artists to document stories within the borders of the neighborhood.
Back in Berlin, a group of unknown artists spilled buckets of purple, red, blue, and yellow paint into the intersection at Rosenthaler Platz. Unsuspected drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians moved through the paint, leaving traces of their temporary movements on the pavement. The vibrant lines of colors show patterns of crossing and the overlapping of boundaries between people on and off wheels.
In 1974, the Army Corp of Engineers approached artists in Los Angeles to build a mural for the Tujunga Wash Flood Control Channel. The project evolved into a half-mile long mural along the tributary of the Los Angeles River, which traced the history of San Fernando Valley from pre-historic time to the 1950s. The Great Wall of Los Angeles is currently undergoing further renovation and expansion to include history up to the present time. The mural project further traces the changes in the diverse city and its growing effort to connect the city with its river.
In tracing the borders, boundaries, and histories of our land, these projects help the public to rediscover stories of the past as well as foster awareness of the conceptual and physical movements around them.
