“Breaking Borders” is the evolution of my interactive installation “Die Grenzen der Sprache”. The work presents the statement “Die Grenzen der Sprache sind die Grenzen der Welt” by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The German word “Grenzen” has a double meaning and the phrase can be translated in two ways: “The Limits of Language are the Limits of the World” or “The Borders of Language are the Borders of the World”.
see the dedicated page, with a video of the exhibition in Galerie VBK, Berlin

The installation consisted of a mini-projector and a computer with mouse and round keyboard. The projection was a round video of an endlessly turning wall that had totally enclosed the world. When you clicked on the image, a box appeared where you could enter text. The visitors of the exhibition were invited to write a word or a very short text. This was less simple than it seemed: the round keyboard did not have all the letters of the alphabet, so peope had to be inventive.
Sending the text, the wall broke and you could see the open sky with floating texts: all the words that the visitors had entered, which were stored in a database. So, the more the exhibition progressed, the more words floated in the sky.

In the first part of the video “Breaking Borders”, I present the installation and some scenes of the work in action during the exhibition; in the second part, the complete collection of words float in the sky above Tempelhof, an abandoned airport in Berlin, which is nowadays a field of freedom, where people of different cultures and different backgrounds peacefully stay together.

The incomprehension between different cultures – the most important cause of the problems in the world – can only be combated if people are willing to understand each other’s language and communicate with each other, even if that is not easy.

Screenings:
• May 11, 2020 and ongoing: Bologna in Lettere 2020, the festival online.
• festival WOW.19 / Bulgaria @  The Quarantine Film Festival, Varna – 12-14 July 2018
• group exhibition RiVOLTA CELESTE, from 8th December 2017 to 8th January 2018 at the Museo Comunale in Sant’Oreste, Italy.
read about the exhibition (italian)

title: Breaking Borders
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 4’30”
year: 2017-2018
music in the first part: Bravo – Mehrl – Olivera – Taveira – Italiano: “It is raining more than twice” (excerpt) from the album “En la vuelta de la voz”.
concept, camera, animation, effects and montage: Maria Korporal