Towards the conversion of borders into international public spaces
2005
Supported by Land Brandenburg, Italienisches Kulturinstitut Berlin
Studio.eu, Stalker, Unlab

Between August 21 and 25, 2005 we walked along the wall that once marked the borderline between what was united, dividing a single urban fabric, dividing Berlin and the World. We travelled this 155 km long path on foot, by bicycle and by boat, crossing what was once known as “no-man’s land“: a system of walls-borders that is a space and not a line.
A territory that was held hostage by an international situation for years, the result of an a-topia that was protracted for decades, creating a “political void“ whose appearance was that of some incredible temporary work, dropped onto the landscape according to the logic of service requirements. Having fulfilled its role the work was removed and that which remains is a void whose raison d’etre has been expropriated. Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin wall, according to the nature of our work, we went there to investigate the collective practices taking place here and the reactions they generate. What we found was a void, the result of this new condition of being a “free space“, a space that currently expresses the dimension of public space like few other contemporary spaces, yet which awaits a large project.
A project that offers each of us the possibility to experiment with a new type of space, “an international public space“, beginning with the realisation of the bicycle path proposed to the European Community by the member of Parliament Mr. Michael Cramer as part of a project that deals with the entire area of the former Iron Curtain. It is a project that ideally connects one border with all borders, moving towards their conversion from limits into new spaces of relationship. A “void” that belongs to the global realm.

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