FLUID GEOGRAPHIES – Reconsidering the Notion of Border in Contemporary Art

We are excited to annouce the details and programme of the second annual conference in the Borders series: “FLUID GEOGRAPHIES”

18-19 June 2025, Venice

Day 1> German Center for Venetian Studies (Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza)

Borders do not exist but are dispositifs – to use a Foucaultian concept – politically conceived and geographically predetermined but also psychologically experienced or socially and culturally constructed. Borders do not have to divide; they can also connect. The border can be a place as well as a non-place of encounter and/or separation. Borders are fluid: they change through observation, movement and construction. Borders can both disappear and be broken.

People are constantly crossing borders, be it out of protest, a desire for power or because they are on the run. Sometimes we cross our inner boundaries and discuss the limits of what can be said. However, borders are also patterns of order, such as the delineation of epochs or metric measurements. Ideological borders change based on experience. Once established, borders also remain constant in our imagination and change through dreams. Artistic projects are just as often concerned with these transgressions.

Which borders do artists, curators and scholars come up against? How do they define and negotiate them? In line with these questions, the two-day conference deals with the topic of borders, especially from the perspective of photography and the moving image.

During the first day workshop, scholars and curators will exchange views on different ways of understanding borders, starting from their personal experience as cultural professionals. In doing so, participants will adopt theoretical-philosophical, technological-media and even ecological perspectives to explore the limits of photography and the moving image, and to highlight future challenges and trends. The second day will be dedicated to individual presentations of art projects and film screenings. The programme will focus on one hand on the political and social perceptions of borders and on the other, on rivers as liminal spaces from multiple perspectives.

At the end of the two days the book Venice, an Archipelago of Art and Ecologies (transcript, 2025), which delves into the fragile but resi- lient Venetian cultural ecosystem at the time of the climate crisis, will be presented and discussed by the editors and selected authors. The book stems from a collaboration between the research centres Zwischenräume (Univer- sity for Continuing Education Krems) and NI- CHE (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice).

You can download the full programme here: Fluid Geograpgies (PDF)

Photo: Randa Mirza