SCHENGEN INNER WALLS 2015
Europe
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PROJECT EXHIBITED IN THE XXth ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL
VALPARAISO | CHILE 2017
A wall, a ditch, a wire fence: they are materializations of a narrative tacked finely through centuries. Narrative made up by the sum of voices of those who coexisted, in a moment of history, with the circumstances that motivated its construction. Those authors thought and wrote about these structures, bestowed them with attributes and sublimated them above its own materiality, either expressing themselves in poetry, chronicle or journalism.
These are narratives and statements of great subjectivity, often contradictory or mythical, partial and biased, as so it is the uncertain flow of history. Because, it is not facts what describe the history of the walls, but the narrative that, as a poetic artifice, finally remains of them.
We know border walls typify the failure of dialog and represent an archaic fear that has been repeated on and on in the political architecture of cultures of all times. Let’s just remember the famous “Hannibal ad portas!” as the perfect and imperishable formula of the sublimated statement of fear.
“We’re going to burn the house down | Narrative of the Walls” is an essay of poetical creation that investigates and reinterprets these stories and statements to come up and materialize them in the form of an installation. The project focuses on the search, selection and free translation of texts and excerpts related to the main walls and border barriers raised during the last four thousand years. In these brief extracts, unlike and unconnected, and between them so distant in time and space, the wall becomes present by its own voice. The narratives reveal similarities that allow us to recognize contexts and common motivations to men of all times. The fact that stone has today turned into electrified wire it does not change the repetitive exercise of dominant powers that impose segregation, pushing nations to raise barriers one against the other. Then, walls emerge as the maximum stress point in the hybrid and half-breed space of borders.
Thus, walls have accompanied us, in a literal and physical way, from the ancient city of Uruk up to the current border of United States-México. And updating itself, it found its way to adopt its own contemporary virtual narrative: whether appearing as Facebook's wall or as the intangible border line established by the legal frame of the Schengen territory.
Paradoxical irony of this age of globalization and hyperconnectivity: while goods and capitals circulate every time more freely, people find more and more difficulties to move around the world.
Our limited western perspective led us to think that after the fall of Berlin wall good times were blowing and an era of freedom was ahead. Ingenuous optimism, because today there’re about 26.000 kilometers of walls in use which represent near 10% of total borders. More than in any other time in history.
It seems that our fear to Hannibal’s shade is still “ad portas”.
Silvia Veloso’s project "We’re going to burn the house down | Narrative of the Walls" is part of Barbarie-pensar con otros’ publishing activity.
The installation presents three screens projecting texts and excerpts related to the 39 walls, constructed in different moments of history (from 2700 B.C. to 2017 A.D.), selected for this project.
Each image includes a text extract or except, the name, location in the map, building date and the approximate length of each wall or barrier.
The selection of texts prioritizes the proximity and contemporaneousness of the narrative to the date of construction of the wall to which it refers.
Through a QR code inserted in each image it is possible to access to this back up in the web that collects all texts and notes for a comprehensive and wide-ranging reading.
In the screens, the images appear in sequence, as passing the pages of a book, composing this way the narrative of the walls across the texts in which these structures were mentioned through history.
Somehow this sequence eliminates the spatial and temporal distance between different and distant moments of history, since it reveals the cyclical and steady acting patterns of human groups concerning their very similar archetypes of behavior. Thus, Procopio's chronicle on the Long Walls of Thrace, written in the 6th century A.D., very well might be an article of any digital contemporary newspaper.
Through vintage handset earphones connected to each screen, public access to listen excerpts of several recordings that mention or refer to some of the walls and barriers built, to the exception of China's Great Wall, in the last eighty years.
SOME WALLS AND BORDER BARRIERS IN USE BETWEEN COUNTRIES
WALLS AND BORDER BARRIERS OUT OF USE TODAY
LISTEN TO SCREEN 1 AUDIOS
LISTEN TO SCREEN 2 AUDIOS
LISTEN TO SCREEN 3 AUDIOS
VAMOS A QUEMAR LA CASA
Silvia Veloso
MUROS EN USO
SILVIA VELOSO VAMOS A QUEMAR LA CASA RELATO DE LOS MUROS WE'RE GOING TO BURN THE HOUSE DOWN NARRATIVE OF THE WALLS XX BIENAL DE ARQUITECTURA DIALOGOS IMPOSTERGABLES IMPOSTERGABLE MURO BARRERA VERJA VALLA VALLA ELECTRIFICADA FRONTERA MUROS WALL WALLS BORDER WALL WIRE FENCE FENCE FRONTIER ELECTRIFIED POETRY SYSTEM IN CHAOS AND MACHINA SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AMERICAN MINUTE
Silvia Veloso Poetry System in chaos and Machina Sentimental Education of Artificial Intelligence AI American Minute wall barrier border barrier USA border wall art project Biennal of Architecture Valparaiso 2017 poems