Source: http://tinyurl.com/hftxpsp - Artist: Banksy

The rise and fall, the construction and deconstruction of various types of boundaries is the very story of human civilization and contemporary social transformation’ — T.K. Oommen

Stories like the partitioning of the Middle East after World War I and the divvying up of Africa towards the end of the 19th century by imperialist European powers are particularly astounding. That large swaths of land could be chopped up, deterritorialized, and given away with just ruler and pen, symbolized the fundamental perversity of human dominion over land and life and the contrivance of manmade divisions.

Humans are quite efficient at defining borders in every domain of our lives. From law to language, genre to geopolitics, we use the confines of metaphorical and physical borders to simplify complex systems, consolidate power, provide structure, and assert sovereignty. But in an increasingly globalized and digitized world, where distance is arbitrary, borders are more porous and traversable than they’ve ever been. Walls are crumbling, modes of being are becoming more diffuse, and the legitimacy and necessity of old world divides are being called into question.

Two questions dominate the scene as we explore the need for borders: in what context are they necessary, and along what lines do we construct them? A recent wave of political rhetoric is calling for a world with firmer borders, but what does this mean in an era where boundaries are more fluid than ever before?

Join Graphite Publications as we take a critical lens to the borders in our lives, examining how they’ve shaped our history, culture, ideology, economic production, and creative output.

Gigi x