I have had in my mind this thought which I came back to me and seems to become more concrete as I try to put it into practice: what do we mean when we talk about a world without borders? Or what do we want to see? Or how might that experience be like if there were only superficial restrictions in place and if we could — as Glissant expressed it, move through to taste the atmosphere of a place. I have to go back to reading Glissant because a lot of things are mixed up in my memory (chemobrain) but this definitely stuck and remained with me and I was reminded of it again when in one of our latest LIMBO meetings, some of the participants asked why is it that we have to put borders in place? Why all these restrictions? Doesn’t the world belong to all of us?
I went home thinking about borders. How do we see borders? Are they protection? Who is protected by these borders? And who are we protecting ourselves from? And why do we need to keep others out in order to feel protected or safe? What do we mean by safety? What do we mean by security?
I asked these questions of myself because I live in a country to which people from other countries migrate to or flee towards to ask for asylum. I live in a country in which the discussion around migrants and asylumseekers is so fraught that one actually risks losing friendships in the process.
I don’t have the power to make change happen on a big scale and I don’t have the power to go out into the large arena and make discussions happen but I thought on how to bring that practice of flowing through borders into a very small space.
For this month’s LIMBO, I thought of asking participants to work together to fill up white space with writing or drawings, with lines or curves or symbols, with whatever they can think about to express their presence in the world. The invitation being this: if someone puts down a mark, how will you interact with it? How will you cross the borders? How do you enter space where you didn’t put a mark first?
It’s an exercise that I find myself wanting to repeat with others. Without our realising it, we have our own concept of borders, even on something as small and simple as a piece of paper. Creating on a space reserved and marked yours feels different from creating in a space that says–this is for all of us. Leave your marks, interact with other marks, there is no one artist, no one author, no one creator, it belongs to all of us.
There are questions that arise from this exercise that I also want to think about and which I find myself curious about: how does it feel to cross over into another space? What changes once you make that decision to leave a mark there? To interact with something that’s there? How does it change the way you perceive the work?
I didn’t get to ask this of the group, but I find myself wondering: How do exercises of collaborative creation change the way we see the world and the way we interact with one another?
In talking about this with a dear friend who is a fellow artist, activist and also a writer in the field, I expressed a vision of a room that becomes filled with doodles and maps and words and drawings. And how, it would be interesting to discover how willing we are to layer on top of what is already there and how that space would not be a work attributed to any one person but it would be attributed to all who collaborated whether the person is invited or comes upon it by happenstance, where those making marks can also be living creatures that we take care of.
Writing this, I realise that I am writing about the world we live in. We are all in the process of creating or re-creating, making or re-making, building or re-building–perhaps we layer over what is already there–we bear witness. We see how systems put in place have shaky foundations and how those who benefit from these systems try to prop them up. We bear witness, we offer criticque. But is offering criticque enough?
Marking the empty page to make something together can involve some risk. Stepping out into the world, making a decision to make or leave a mark involves much deeper and more thoughtful movement. What kind of mark do I want to leave? How will the mark that I leave affect those whose spaces or whose lives I live a mark on?
In any case, for me, the question strikes closer to home and makes me think that if I have marked my children with love and care and the ability to be thoughtful and considerate of others, then some of what I am meant to do has been done.
I wish I could share the picture of our collaboration, but it belongs to the group. But perhaps it’s an exercise some of you who read this blog might want to try on your own. Just take the step. Make the invitation and see where it takes you.
Agyamanac Unay for stopping by. Blessings and peace to you who read this.
You must be logged in to post a comment.