We are an international group of artists, architects, art historians and urbanists proposing an exhibition at ngbk to directly address the idea of ‘Border’ and its immediate impacts. In order to better understand the complexities of this phenomenon we are focusing on the flashpoints of conflict where Fortress Europe is setting up shifting barriers and the contested ‘line’ between North and South at the US/Mexico border.

Challenging official narratives of the Border is a global endeavor and requires a multitude of perspectives and tools. Despite the seductive urge to search for a unifying theme, or to focus on the local urgencies of the situation in Europe, Germany, Berlin or Kreuzberg, complex issues require subjective distance. In medicine, this process is called anamnesis; a term that means ‘calling to memory’ and describes the required gathering of the history of a patient before making a diagnosis. Thus, we are collaborating with artist/experts from the border between the US/Mexico and the Calais/UK tunnel to interrogate the Border’s intangible, tangible and physical impacts.

This exhibit intends to ‘Tunnel’ underneath the surface polarities of North/South, Citizen/Migrant and East/West in order to disassemble the different layers of visibility and invisibility at play in such essentialist constructions. Divided into 3 parts: Ephemeral manifestations such as technology and surveillance, Material production and the fabric of free trade and Corporal impacts on landscapes and bodies, it seeks to reveal narratives that are usually left out of the white cube and ‘Skyjack’ the very idea of Border.