The Relativity of Boundaries

Abstract

Pat Badani is an intermedia artist, educator, and researcher who studied at the University of Alberta (Canada) and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she now resides. Her Web-work has received a Canada Council Media Arts Research Grant and has been exhibited and discussed in international new media festivals, notably at File 2005 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and at the New Forms Festival in 2004 in Vancouver, Canada. Her latest project, Where are you from?_Stories (2002-2005), has developed across multiple platforms--both digital and physical. (1) Inscribed at the juncture between net.art, documentary video, and visual culture, it draws upon live events and dialogue, culminating in an on-line video database about nomadism and migration, one of today's issues of global relevance. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Where are you from? is a universal question exchanged when people meet for the first time so they may contextualize each other within territory, nation, or family relations--an exercise in coming to grips with the strangeness of others. There were times in human history when that question was addressed to someone coming from a nearby village or from another valley. Today, the question is commonly directed toward travelers from foreign countries such as migrants and tourists--a phenomenon that signals a renewed perception of time and space; a new understanding of the larger formations of culture today; (2) and the relativity of boundaries. Using this question, Badani set out to explore how the complex relations between centers and peripheries, as well as between people and the places to which they belong, are found in both local and global environments. Globalization is a new word describing an old process that began at the dawn of man when the first migrants walked out of Africa. wish to leave the place from where one originates to seek a better future elsewhere has always been a central motivation for in an increasingly interconnected world. But, if a German professional interviewed for Badani's Internet platform describes himself as a nomad who lives in the same location for only two to four years, the inevitable questions follow: Where are you going? and for? Is this type of nomadism a sign of escape--a means to sustain the illusion of improvement by perpetually moving forward or the result of an imperative to seek a better life elsewhere politically and financially? latter was certainly the case for a Bosnian refugee whose answer to Badani's queries was: The war started in my country, and we had to make a decision, not for us because our lives were already messed up, but a good decision for our daughter, so we escaped. These are but two examples from fifty-five interviews archived in the on-line video database. Badani's aim was to bring together a plurality of views about displacement from citizens in today's globally interconnected world: tourists, nomads, refugees, immigrants, local migrants, and sedentary locals. Her multifocal vantage point reflects the open notion of the term migration used in contemporary theories and artworks today. What is at play in the work is the of people and languages and the hybrid, rather than the single, perspective of the Nation looking at the others--a perspective similarly found in the European project Projekt Migration from 2002-2006 where is seen as a main force for social change. (3) Also at play is the of images in motion, brought about by the digital revolution and art practices that intersect with live spectacle, where images migrate from film theaters to video screening rooms, exhibition spaces, and Web spaces. CHALLENGING POSITION Where are you from?_Stories was filmed as Badani retraced her personal nomadic history in six cities: Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Paris. After creating live events in carefully selected public locations, Badani invited citizens to share personal stories integrating images of self- and trans-local experiences. …