Artistic Practices at the Border: Waiting and Crossing in the Context of Escape and Exile

Abstract

Cross-border exile and flight profoundly change the disposition of the subject. Familiar spaces must be abandoned and relationships dissolved. Language and cultural spaces change, and the exiled are confronted with the uncertainty of their residence status. Border crossings are therefore dominant experiences in the context of exile. They mean physical movement across national borders, but also being at or on the border as an existential, liminal state. In artistic works, border experience, border crossing, limitation, and delimitation are reflected in a variety of ways. The chapter will examine how the exile-related threshold state is negotiated and how boundaries and their overcoming affect artistic work. Artistic practices on the border will be discussed in two categories, which, however, are not to be understood as binary constellations: “Waiting” at the border can be understood as a situation in transition, a staying-walking that can turn into activity in the event of a situation-related change. The “crossing” of borders, on the other hand, requires a special skill especially from refugees without visas and freedom to travel: Detours, interruptions, and camouflage are common practices in dealing with borders in the context of flight and exile. The contribution will approach the waiting at and the crossing of borders from the perspective of the arts, spanning historical exile and contemporary flight and migration together: How did the prisoners of the French internment camp Gurs around 1940 reflect their status in drawings; how is the status in waiting reflected? What possibilities do the works of the contemporary artist Francis Alÿs offer for overcoming borders at different global border lines? My chapter thus examines how borders become a challenge for artistic and performative practices and—vice versa—how artists react to the limitations of borders.