Nancy McManus
Professor Shellen Greene
Art 309: Migration and Visual Art
March 19th, 2010
Outdated Boarder
The concept of globalization is still a developing and new idea. According to Ratnam Globalization is the result of
“ Advances in Communications technology, such as mobile phones, satellite television and the internet, all seem to bring these and other epochal happenings around the globe into the domestic orbit of those to whom they would once have appeared remote, exotic or irrelevant.” (Ratnam,2004)
This concept of a world connection to people and ideas that were not always present leads to a number of changes in traditional concepts. One notable change in the globalized world is the way it has changed the concept of the boarder. The boarder is traditionally recognized as the physical and conceptual demarcation of nations from one another. However the shift due to rapid globalization has led to challenges to the boarder, artists working within this topic approach the boarder as concept though a variety of approaches aiming to try and discover it’s true application in a post colonial world.
The challenge of the notion and definition of the contemporary concept of boarder is very openly explored in the work of Alighiero Boetti’s, Map of the world.
His map is a woven tapestry, denoting each nation’s boarder by its individual flag. The tapestry was made created by women in Afghanistan, to whom Boetti allowed to choose the color, and depiction of the flags used as well as the composition, the length of time these large scale tapestries took to create meant that they were often the boarders were already different by the time the entire tapestry was finished.
His idea to “demonstrate, these boundaries are nevertheless involved in a constant process of flux and negotiation”. (Novarese, 1990), his work challenged the notion of a solid demarcation defined by a boarder. Both in his use of labor from out side his own nation, effectively utilizing the globalized world to create his map and then questioning what it means to be confided by a boarder that has the potential to change suddenly in a world so interconnected and unstable.
(Oyvind Fahlström, 1972, Privet collection, Acrylic and India ink on Vinyl mounted on wood).
Using a non-traditional approach to mapping information, Fahlström was the firs to use financial information as well as political issues to determine the map’s projection. (1) The concept of a world build from worldwide capitalism, stems from Noel Carroll’s idea that,
“Capitalism, perhapse the driving engine behind the globalizing tendencies of the present, has always had a world wide ambitions with respect to markets and resources. … Globalization is merely and advanced stage of capitalism.” (Carroll, 2007)
Fahlström’s work questions the idea of what a nation really is, what information is truly important to determining the idea of a “nation” and father more the idea of a “boarder”.
“ [Fahlström’s] Map presents a topography of current historical "facts" separated from each other by borders which call to mind national borders. You soon realize these borders are random, produced by pictorial necessity, and are dictated by the amount of information they contain. (Kelly, 1995)
The use of a boarder to only function for aesthetics speaks very strongly to the idea of what the boarder becomes in a world where nations own land of other nations. Currency functions as a means of control and the populations of these nations are simply numbers and contributors to a nations wealth.
Fahlström created a map in which the boarders only function for aesthetics, however the boarder functions as a wall blocking access to outsiders in Santiago Sierra’s Palabra tapadp.
‘Covered World’
(Santiago Sierra, 2003, Vinice Biennale, Vinice Italy 2003, Black plastic and masking tape were used to cover the word Spain set in relief over the entrance to the pavilion)
Sierra presented his work at the 2003 Biennale as a response to the outdated concept the boarder holds when applied to the newly unified European Union. (2) Sierra’s piece stood guarded on the outside, refusing entrance to anyone not holding a Spanish passport. Those who were allowed to enter only found the remnants of the installation from the 2001 Biennale. When questions about the meaning of his piece Sierra said:
“A nation is actually nothing; countries don’t exist. When astronauts went into space they did not see a line between France and Spain; France is not painted pink and Spain blue. They are political constructions, and what’s inside a construction? Whatever you want to put there. And in fact the pavilion wasn’t empty: there were leftovers there from previous shows. It was an act of respect to the history of the place. But the work was also the people who were passing by it. The piece was not the empty space but rather the situation.” (Margolles, 2004)
Sierra’s piece brings into question the true importance a nation’s boarders hold for those with in them. He questions the idea that there is anything better on the other side of a boarder by the presence of debris and trash left behind from the 2001 show. He is questioning the ethnic history of nations in which the boarders are restricted in a world where globalization has created a mixed and diverse population asking if national purity is not a maintainable reality. (3)
The impact of Globalization, connected locations from near and far creating new ties and relationships among nations and populations has had a great effect on the current state of our international attitude and approach to the concept of boarders. Their work illustrates how boarders are constantly changing, and no longer limiting to our collaboration with people’s we have never met, presents a world in which boarders function merely for aesthetic, open the idea of what a world of sharing nations, without walls, could become. Together these artists belong to what Carroll refers to as “a transactional or global art world” one that allows for questions though its own ideals, one that would not be possible with out a globalized world. (4)
Endnotes
1 Nirum Ratnam, “Art and Globalization,” Themes in Contempoary art 1. (London: Yale University Press, 2004) 67
2 Nirum Ratnam, “Art and Globalization,” Themes in Contempoary art 1.
(London: Yale University Press, 2004) 67
2 Nirum Ratnam, “Art and Globalization,” Themes in Contempoary art 1.
(London: Yale University Press, 2004) 67
4 Noel Carroll, “Art and Globalization: Then and Now.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2007 65
Works Cited
Carroll, Noel. “Art and Globalization: Then and Now.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,2007
65 (1): 142
Kelly, Mike. “Oyvind Fahlstrom”, Myth Science. 1995 p.
Margolles, Teresa. “Santiago Sierra”, BOMB, V.86, (Winter 2004) p. 9-13
Novarese, Renata. “Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962- 1972”, 18 March, 2010.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/artepovera/boetti.htm
Ratnam, Nirum. “Art and Globalization,” Themes in Contempoary art 1. (London: Yale University Press, 2004) 67
(1): 142
