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fences

Installation of removed/ stolen sections of fencing - from city and country.
Part of the Alchemy of Eviction exhibition @ mo.ë, Vienna, 2016

Fences control free movement, of humans and animals, they lay claim to certain areas, control and determine what is and is not acceptable on each side and set a boundary of separation. Some have been shaped by mutual agreements and are fair and sensible to our common good, but some land has been unfairly enclosed or stolen over centuries by established power systems, preventing wider society accessing what was once common land.

We need to shape our world, and laying out lines and barriers can help us in this, but are these lines where they are most helpful or have they become stuck in old thought and power structures? Could they be more flexible, permeable or removed all together to help shape a new more open form for a more connected, accessible, trusting, equitable world.

The positioning of the fences and barriers out there in the world today are based on ideologies - ways of thinking, inner thought structures. So what are these and how are these held in place by these external barriers? If we shift a fence or boundary in the outer world, will we also work upon the internal boundaries that maintain our entrenched boundaries of separation? Or vice versa?