Through A Wall

‘The walls impose a simplified identity on those who cannot cross them. You are either from here or there. You are either one of us or one of them, the walls allow for no nuance, no mutually agreed apon story. Along the Indo-Bangadesh border, the walls disregard any bonds between Bengalis on one side of the line and Bengalis on the other. The West Bank wall ones not care what Israelis and Palestinians might have in common. On Cyprus, the barricades reject any sense of a blurred Cypriot identity. ‘

Walls : Travels Along The Barricades’ Marcello Di Cintio

There is a controversy innate in the use of a Wall as a centrepiece for a piece of public artwork;  last year, on trialling the idea just in the context of a public seminar at King’s, we had our preconceptions confounded about how people would respond to the idea of constructing and deconstructing a wall in the public domain in a collective act of peaceful subversion, by realising this made a few people feel very uncomfortable, whose actual or perceived security has been historically threatened by the previous lack of walls.

Despite it being an imaginary work /act, the Wall that was being imagined by those with these concerns  – In this case the wall in the West Bank – needed to be ‘kept in place’… We want to know what those on the other side are living through, but we feel threatened by it’. Coupled with this though, in the same breath, was an excitement that there could be a safe space in which to encounter and experience the perspectives of those who were – in the broader political backdrop –  unknown /feared / mistrusted and for the separation to break down, even for a moment.

On the other hand,  in the minds of a few others whose absolute perspective on that particular wall was that it is illegal, oppressive and anyone who might want it to stay in place should be engaged with, with great caution and maybe not at all, equally challenged the very core concept of the work which Craig and I both felt strongly: that it should be a hybrid work that is quietly but radically inclusive, even of those with whom we might have a complete divergence of political opinion.

I understand better now why I felt and feel this , having now read Marcello Di Cintio’s brilliant book “Walls: Travels Along The Barricades’. This timely book (for me, and for the world) makes for compelling , devastating reading, as he comes up close and personal with the communities and gatekeepers of a number of  key walls globally – the berm in Western Sahara, the Spanish /Moroccan border all at Ceuta /Melilla, the Indo -Bangladesh fence, Cyprus’ Nicosia/ Lefkosa line, the US- Mexican border wall and the ‘Peace Lines’ in Belfast. This book has been my backdrop for the last couple of weeks.

It makes clear – from the millions of lives lost , the decimation of fragile  ecosystems, sacred lands, family ties  and economic livelihoods, the increase in prejudice, fear, resentment and the inhumanity with which those who try to cross walls /borders are so often treated – that no -one living on either side of any of these spaces, or operating them, thinks they work . By ‘work’ this means both that they keep the ‘unwanted’ in or out, that they keep the ‘peace’ or that they are a long term solution to society working better as a result of their presence. So, different levels of working that will be more important to some than others.

That doesn’t mean that the citizens of those divided places  don’t want them to remain in place in many cases – Belfast, Greek Cypriots and Israelis being the most notable – but the sense that there has been a collective human failure to find another kind of solution to co-exist was so very painfully clear to me as I read this book. I had to put the Book down and weep in a number of places. It is vividly and rigorously researched and lived, it brings travel writing to a whole new level – true human activism.

The duality of the situations he writes about, in terms of human perceptions of Walls as fallible dividing structures, are most clear at a collective, psychological level. That is, in exposing the fracture in identity, the sense of a wound that is opened every time the wall is referred to or looked at.

On another note, erecting and maintaining walls and keeping them impermeable is big business, most clearly shown in the US-Mexican border  chapter – the security companies,  traffickers and prison services make millions, while the statistics of the ‘success rate’ of keeping migrants out of the US is so low as to be laughable. So then one asks why they Walls are so the new black these days, proliferating at an intense rate…

This  is where Di Cintio made a brilliant point which made me sit up straight, when talking about the  Spanish – Morrocan border at Ceuta /Melilla;

“The new barriers might fail at security, but like Hadrian’s wall, they succeed as theatre. The actual effectiveness of the walls is secondary to the illusion they create: one of exclusion and difference”

Closer to home , this is what has been happening in Calais and Dunkerque, and now I see where the French (and by implication for total complicity, the British ) took their dark inspiration from. Seeing the historical precedents on border policy and its human collateral globally –  it  became especially clear why so little is being done to humanise the camps just 2 hours from here –  in Di Cintio’s book in his  conversation with Kat Rodriguez, director of immigration right organisation Derecho Humanos in Tucson Arizona;

In 2004-2011, 3000 people died around the border. ‘The Feds act shocked by the deaths’ Kat said, but she wanted me to understand that these deaths are intentional. Dead migrants are a platform in the government’s strategy. ‘

There are many activist movements that stand up against these walls and their impact on human rights and disdain for human lives not on their right side ; Voices against the Wall, No More Deaths (US), and Di Cintio likens the sound art of the Anta Project there by musician  Glenn Weyant – who records and ‘plays’ the Wall as a musical instrument to the Send a Message Wall in the West Bank (which has its critics in the Palestinian territory and in academia, due to the way it has been co-opted by international activists and commodified by local traders, but that’s a whole other story that Craig has done a book and research project on so I won’t even attempt to unravel it here, yet.)

Glenn says ‘If they are going to put this thing up, I am going to transform it. As far as I am concerned, this is not a barrier. It is not stopping people from crossing, instead it is a 2000 mile long instrument. The government spent millions of dollars to build the world largest instrument.’  By playing the wall, Glenn subverted it. He understood what he was doing might seem like nonsense , but the wall itself was ridiculous. …’ ‘In a way, I am taking the wall down.’ Like send a message, ‘both sought to defeat the walls by robbing them of their military machismo ‘

Defeating Walls as an art practice. The psychological ones are the ones that interest me at the moment, as they are also what create the ones that carve up our world and society.

Within all this, when we were at Kings,  there was the question  of what the role of art in the realm or on the border of activism should be. At the sharp end  activists suggested that it be used as a tool with an agenda, with fixed and clear aims and objectives. As an artist, I find this approach prescriptive and potentially alienating of anyone who doesn’t already share the preset agenda.  There are different kinds of activism that can be at work in an art work; my tendency is to aim for  a flattening out of polarised viewpoints through the sharing of narratives  at a deeply human level . Opening up questions  that could stimulate social change by changing audiences perceptions of themselves and others.
And on that note, if you haven’t signed up for Blast Theory’s Operation Black Antler at the Brighton Festival next month in collaboration with Hydrocracker Theatre company –  where you sign up to go undercover for the night –  do so. From what I am observing this is going to be a viewpoint-subverting and seminal work which isn’t to be missed and they have been carefully navigating what is very controversial territory with great sensitivity as well as playfulness  . More info here.

Next time I’ll write on the Apps for Artists workshop I attended at Blast Theory and what I am coming up with and trying out….

Nexy

So, to begin.  This was a project I didn’t plan on creating. Like my last project Burning the Books (a live touring work exploring debt in it many forms) it takes a central metaphor – the Wall –  and attempts to provide an entry point into thinking about a whole network of contemporary themes which are so complex, intense and troubling (conflict, belief, prejudice, fear, division, belonging, anti-migration narratives, trauma, violence, non-violence, forgiveness, justice etc …)  that by the time we got granted the R&D from Arts Council England in January, part of me just wanted to lie down and forget the whole thing. Why couldn’t I be working on something playful, frivolous, fun, shallow and something I could forget about at 5pm every day? Just to get some relief.  Oh, that’s called having a different kind of proper job, (I’m not sure what it would be)  and that’s not what I am here for, apparently.

It seems that now, as I get older and especially over the last decade, subjects are choosing me rather than me choosing them – and they closely relate to either what I am experiencing in my own life or what I feel impacted or concerned by, to the point that not making work about these issues would feel like being in denial of something deeply important. And not doing my job as an artist – but that’s another discussion to be focused on later.

On the positive side, I am absolutely not alone in this project. . It emerged out of a series of conversations and provocations I was invited to take part in in late 2014  / early 2015 – a three part Salon series  exploring Conflict and Belief (leading to new collaborative art works)  and hosted by King’s Cultural Institute and 3FF (who had hosted one of my Book of Debts at their Urban Dialogues show and so knew my work).

The basis of it was this; ‘Faced with entrenched fault lines of opinion, belief, and practice, artists are often uniquely able to carve out an alternative space for reflection, imagination and discussion’. From that they seeded 4 collaborative projects between a few of the 30 artists, academics and activists who had been invited and found resonances in /proposed collaborative ideas. It was a kind of high-brow intellectual speed dating over some very nice food and wine thankyou. Some brilliant speakers from all sectors and a sense of impending pressure to come up with something that might turn into a seed project, as they had a little bit of money and support to give at the end.

I  was very burnt out that winter after a ridiculously busy year and wasn’t sure I could come up with anything, and almost didn’t continue.  But an image grew throughout the day  of the second salon which intrigued me. It was the image of a great Wall, packed with hundreds, possibly thousands of contributed texts / objects and dotted with gaps here and there, through which people -strangers –  were interacting, and passing pieces of the wall, until at one point, it got completely un-made and nothing remained. A kind of metaphysical Berlin Wall experience of sorts.

That evening one of the speakers – Craig Larkin, an academic, researcher and writer in the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies at King’s – stood up and starting talking about his work on walls (!) ; conflict, memory, narrative – from the peace lines in Northern Ireland (where he grew up)  to his projects at the Separation Wall in East Jerusalem,and his research on young people’s experience of post -conflict cities such as  Beirut, where he had lived and worked for a number of years.

However, when Craig spoke he managed to communicate a range of highly complex ideas and experiences  in such a simple, direct and powerful way that I was immediately engaged, showing images and talking with great humanity about the people he has met and the complexities of keeping  a balanced view of such an explosive subject – Middle eastern politics and faith issues – and finding alternative ways of looking at it through human story. So really I see him as a storyteller and social activist of sorts. And he was intrigued by the idea of a wall coming down not up and of the potential of creative processes intervening in the work he is doing.

I had also discussed ideas with another academic, called Paula Serafini , who is no longer on the project, and together we  used the small amount of seed money we had to spend time together and devise /offer  a closed workshop (with potential community leaders and partners)  and a public event to test out the concept of the work (the sketch below was a rendering of what it could be, but this has change since), to see what the problematics of the project might be and look more closely at the way we each addressed the themes. The event was called Through A Wall : the role of the artist , academic and activist in addressing belief and conflict.

I’ll publish the writing  I presented/performed and what developed  in response to the responses we got or link it on this blog soon – I’m currently editing a version of it to go on the next stage of my Library Shelf for Akerman Daly which has just gone live. This is an online project  connected to a touring show I have some of my sculptural work in called Tall Tales (currently in London) –  more on that later when the full show opens in a couple of weeks, as there are some connections to be made between this and that project, embodied in my work straddling digital, written and textile culture.

The other collaborator is theatre practitioner Maria Pattinson, (who I invited on board last summer) and I have been looking at the more internal, psychological aspects of the project and how these could be explored using live, body and object based processes in groups and this is feeding into my current individual explorations at Blast Theory.