Workshop “(Un)Defining Borders” at the Fluid Geographies Conference 2025 – Summary

Introduction

The workshop “(Un)Defining Borders” brought together artists, curators, scholars, and activists to critically explore the concept of borders – not only in territorial or political terms, but as constructs shaping aesthetic, technological, ecological, and psychological experience. The idea of ‘fluidity’ was discussed across disciplines and practices, emphasising the transformative and generative potential of borders.

Following a welcome by Richard Erkens, the director of the German Center for Venetian Studies, Christina Hainzl (University for Continuing Education Krems) and Cristina Baldacci (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice–DFBC, NICHE) introduced the topic. Hainzl noted that borders, when approached through art, are inherently fluid. She underscored the capacity of artistic imagination and narrative to question and reconfigure boundaries. Baldacci stressed the multiplicity of borders and called for their deconstruction, particularly within artistic and curatorial practices. She highlighted Venice’s symbolic and physical role as a city where multiple boundaries intersect.

Jeanette Pacher: The Border as Artistic Concept and Institutional Challenge

Jeanette Pacher, curator at the Vienna Secession, described the institution’s artist-centered approach, which encourages ambitious and unconventional projects. Rather than imposing restrictions, the curators work to support and expand artistic visions. Drawing on her personal experience of moving from the UK to Austria, she reflected on different forms of geographical borders – between land and water or shaped by history and terrain – and how these influence one’s perception of enclosure and mobility. She remarked that borders are often perceived as obstacles tied to power and restriction, but that art – particularly through cartographic imagination, as in her work on medieval maps – can both bridge and dissolve them, offering new ways of envisioning the world. Her curatorial practice engages with such ideas, as seen in Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project, which makes visible the paths of undocumented migration, or Miet Warlop’s One Song, a performance that pushes the limits of the body to reflect societal pressures. For Pacher, art has the potential to expose and reimagine both physical and mental boundaries.

Noemi Quagliati: Imaging Borders from Above

Noemi Quagliati examined the historical and technological development of aerial photography, focusing on its role in military surveillance and mapping. She discussed early devices like the Reihenbildner, which required strict flight paths and produced precise, analysable images, as well as failed attempts like pigeon photography, which was rejected due to weight limits that prevented the use of zoom-capable lenses. She linked these imaging systems to broader questions of control and displacement – such as in the war in Ukraine, where aerial reconnaissance enables targeting, while those affected document their flight through photography on social media. This dual role of photography – enabling control while bearing witness – raises important ethical questions about visibility, access, and power. Reflecting on the visual opacity of the Venetian lagoon, she concluded that such environments call for other sensing, other narration, other mapping, and other ways of writing about human and more-than-human geographies.

Marco Baravalle: Working from the Margins

Marco Baravalle reported on his long-standing work as a cultural activist at Sale Docks, a self-managed space in Venice that positions itself deliberately at the margins of the city’s dominant art infrastructure. Drawing on bell hooks’ concept of the margin as a space of radical openness, he emphasised the political value of operating outside institutional centres. As an example, he described Biennalocene, a performative assembly based on interviews with art workers across the spectrum – from cultural entrepreneurs to museum cleaners – which evolved into a regular assembly and the co-writing of a Charta for Metropolitan Cultural Labour, outlining fairer working conditions. Baravalle also presented Owneh, a network of over thirty Palestinian cultural institutions that, in his view, aims to break away from colonial funding structures and experiment with autonomous, collective models. For him, such projects show how the margins can foster both critique and the construction of alternative practices in the arts.

Lungomare: Borders as Imagination, Transformation, Narrative, and Habitat

Lungomare, represented by Daniele Lupo and Angelika Burtscher, conceives of borders as dynamic and plural spaces. In their interdisciplinary practice, borders are seen as sites of imagination – places where fixed meanings dissolve and new perspectives emerge. They are also understood as transformative zones, where encounters lead to mutual change and contradictions coexist. Within the EU project B-Shapes, Lungomare curated artistic interventions in European borderlands, including works that engaged with everyday crossings and suppressed local histories. Their work also highlights borders as sites of vernacular narratives, where personal and collective memories intersect beyond official accounts. Finally, in projects like Riverscapes, borders are approached as habitats – spaces beyond full human control, where ecological and more-than-human entanglements take shape. Across these dimensions, Lungomare reframes borders as fluid and generative, shaped through artistic action and collective reflection.

Viola Rühse: Dan Perjovschi and the Persistence of Ideological Borders

Viola Rühse introduced the work of Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi, whose “intellectual graffiti” blends drawing, wordplay, and political critique. Positioned between journalism and conceptual art, his humorous and minimalist visual language addresses global issues with deliberate imperfection. His work often references the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall as symbols of ideological divides – between East and West, communism and capitalism, inclusion and exclusion. For him, every museum wall is a potential Berlin Wall: a surface where power structures and cultural hierarchies are exposed. Rühse showed how he reflects on post-communist identity, freedom of expression, and the enduring imbalance between Western and Eastern Europe. In one drawing, the word “Europe” is broken by a wall, marking the division between older and newer EU states. His intentionally flawed English serves as a global yet non-dominant mode of communication. Rühse highlighted how his accessible language draws attention to historical and ongoing physical, psychological and symbolic borders.

Adrian Praschl-Bichler: Human-Machine Boundaries in Trans- and Posthumanist Thought

Adrian Praschl-Bichler explored the boundary between humans and machines as both a conceptual and material one, focusing on the contrasting frameworks of transhumanism and posthumanism. While transhumanism seeks to overcome human limitations through technological enhancement – imagining futures shaped by brain-machine interfaces, genetic engineering, or mind-uploading – posthumanism challenges the humanist ideal of autonomy and control. Drawing on feminist and ecological theory, it views humans as entangled with technologies, environments, and non-human life, emphasising embodiment and interdependence. These opposing visions were illustrated through artworks by Neil Harbisson, a cyborg artist who hears color through an implanted sensor, and Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who creates 3D portraits from found genetic material. Both artists reveal the ethical and philosophical implications of technological integration, surveillance, and identity. Through these examples, Praschl-Bichler highlighted how artistic practice renders abstract theory tangible.

Petra Schaefer: Heike Gallmeier and the Material Poetics of Border Zones

Petra Schaefer introduced the work of Berlin-based artist Heike Gallmeier, whose practice explores visible and invisible physical, spatial, and psychological boundaries. Drawing from her upbringing near the former inner-German border, Gallmeier addresses the ambiguity of borders through transmedial works. In the video You still wouldn’t like me when I’m angry (2013), she breaks through a wall with a self-made sledgehammer, confronting both inner and outer constraints. In Wahrtraum (2011), she merges sculpture, painting, and photography into a staged image space based on Carpaccio’s Dream of St. Ursula. With Outlines (2020), a van converted into a mobile studio and exhibition space, she travelled along Germany’s borders, creating temporary installations from found materials. Schaefer described her approach as nomadic and process-based, echoing Rosi Braidotti’s idea of a subject shaped through movement and encounter. Gallmeier’s work reveals borders as zones of transition, shaped by perception, memory, and material interaction.

Photocredit: Adrian Praschl-Bicher