Injuries Heal
Borders are injuries inflicted upon the world. Fortunately, they heal.
Walls Around the World
“Two decades since the Berlin Wall came down, BBC Mundo looks at walls and barriers around the world which are still standing – or have been put up – since 1989.”
Update: My friend Victor sent a link to this graphic from the amazing TD Architects site. I should really get your website ready, John J!
Update 7 Nov 2009: If you are in or near Berlin on Monday, 9th November 2009, join the Mauer Mob:
“The Berlin Wall project is about creating a “temporary monument of reflection”. When it was created, the wall was one of the clearest man-made divisions of people with different ideologies. For the 20th anniversary of its deconstruction we will rebuild the Berlin Wall, not from steel and concrete, but from people. To remember when Berlin became one again after decades of separations – physically as well as in the minds…
With the “Mauer Mob. 09 Project”, we want to say that such divisions are no longer acceptable in today’s society.”
Update 11 Nov 2009: Mike Johnston – Borders (be sure to read ‘mcananeya’s’ featured comment, too):
“I’ve always thought borders were strange places because it’s a strange idea—an arbitrary line through the landscape where one “place” supposedly ends and another supposedly begins. They makes sense on maps and in our heads, but maybe not so much at the actual location where they’re said to exist. The exception, of course, is when people take them very seriously, like the DMZ between North and South Korea. At those places, our conceptual world exercises its literal hold over our freedom to move about.”
Brian Rose: The Lost Border – Photographs of the Iron Curtain.
Nonfiction
“In 2003, I carried a plastic Holga camera with me for about 8 months during my travels. What began as a simple diversion became a sort of therapy and exercise in seeing. Because of the limitations of the camera, I was unable to precisely control composition and exposure. The camera leaked light causing color shifts and quite unexpected results. Photography with this camera became more about the act of making a picture rather then the picture itself, and I experimented with making only one picture of any given situation. Instinct and reflex were the only guiding principles in making the pictures. The result was pictures that were not “about” anything at all but were still, in their way, “true”. Thus the title, Nonfiction.”
The United States Border
David Eaves: “A closed border is like a closed mind – over time you become less receptive to new ideas or information and begin to atrophy.”
Muntazer al-Zaidi: Why I threw the shoe
Mr. Muntazer al-Zaidi,
It is unfortunate that you end your Guardian article with having thrown the shoe in the name of ‘patriotism’. Why not in the name of humanism, instead?
Patriotism is what aided the invasion and occupation of Iraq to begin with, and one of the principal causes of war along with nationalism and organized religion (mechanical thought).
What if all the soldiers had said ‘no’ when ordered to go kill innocent people in another land?