Unstable Ground
With this Unstable Ground iteration, I am inviting you to encounter our human
worldly entanglement and reflect on how categorisation systems influence our ways
of knowing/experiencing.
Difference across Distance started as a speculative field research during the Destination
Unknown Residency 2021 and is based on the different parallel (un-)natural border
regions around Tegelen (NL): the river Meuse, the highway A73, the state-border
between the Netherlands and Germany, and the forest, heathland and moorland of
the Brachter Wald on the German side. By walking along and crossing these border
regions, I investigated the subtle traces of how they evolve with and through one
another.
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Field Research Trips:
FR #1 – 22.07.2021: walking along the river Meuse after the weekend of the floods,
crossing it by highway-bridge and ferry
FR #2 – 23.07.2021: walking along the German‐Dutch and Brachter Wald border, from
Swalmen to Venlo
FR #3 – 21.08.2021: crossing borders, walking from Swalmen (NL) to Brüggen (DE)
along the border of the Brachter Wald, and back through the Brachter Wald
Alongside the walks and their documentation in photographs, writings and drawings,
I have been reading into Lynn Margulis’ theory of Endosymbiosis in parallel with the
reading of Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence. Biologist Margulis
developed the theory of Endosymbiosis to describe the cooperativeness of inter-
special relations, departed from the competitive framing. The way biological entities
evolve and sustain by changing with and through one another, intrigues me. Latour
emphasises that the different domains in our Western societies, as politics, law,
science, and religion, are no different, and proposes ways to rethink these categories
to give room to experience the world relationally.
Living beings "are open systems, organized by the energy
and materials that incessantly flow through us."
- Acquiring Genomes, Margulis & Dorion, 2003, p. 45