“Dove il confine è invisibile” is a performance made by walking where the border is invisible. The result is a video work that combines moving images and a soundscape as a prologue to the larger project “Travelling flowers and other stories”.

Inkjet print on cotton paper (variable dimensions), pencil on wall (12 m), TV screen (b/w and sound, continuous loop, 2,33”)

The Swiss-Italian border is today highly dematerialized and mostly invisible in space. Based on the use of photography, oral history, and performative walks, the project considers the immaterial presence of this border by focusing on the spatial practices of cross-border work and contemporary migrations.

The starting point is the story of some women employed in a textile factory in Ticino, who used to go into the border woods to collect flowers to sell. Due to the economic disparity between the two nations, Italian cross-border workers have always provided labour in that factory and many others in the area, continuously moving across the boundary line. Following their story and those of other people who inhabit this landscape, the project moves along various border crossing routes.

A travelogue gathers traces of human presence in the environment and conveys the personal experience of the border through images and writing: from the train crossings of contemporary workers to those of people moving in the night, from north to south, and back. Developing a journey that shifts between past and present, ephemerality and permanence, the project reflects on how the repetitive movements of bodies across the border challenge its fixed representation on political maps.

Publication

Brill
2024

60 images (b/w and colour) and 9 textual sections, inkjet print, 15,5 x 23,5 cm
[link]

Installation views

2022
- Palazzo Martinengo, Brescia
- SUPSI Biblioteca, Mendrisio