We are the borderlands, video
The project, developed during my residency in Strasbourg, focuses on the Mimram Bridge as a contemporary symbol of transnational connection between France and Germany. It is also an important symbol of the European community, which gains new meaning in the current context of tensions around borders and migration and on-going war in Ukraine.
My starting point is my own experience of the borderland, a space in which identity reveals itself as fluid and deeply intercultural. The work takes the form of an evolving soundscape, created through my daily presence on the bridge and the recording of passers-by voices, environmental sounds, movement, animals, and nature.
The resulting sound collage is composed of a diversity of voices, revealing multiple experiences coexisting within a single space. The bridge becomes a site of temporary presence, where different histories and perspectives can resonate. The work is accompanied by a poetic narrative evoking contemporary experiences of borders.
The visual layer of the video is a performative action using a silk fabric hand-dyed in shades of ultramarine, the colour of the European Union flag. Using the transparency of the silk, I look at the bridge through the fabric, giving the observed space a blue filter.
Video produced as part of the cross-residency between the Gdańsk Contemporary Art Center and the City of Strasbourg.
