Floating Symmetry | 2007
in collaboration with Ofri Cnaani for the Atlante Mediteraneo catalogue
Floating Symmetry is a visual research and imaginary journey along four axes within the Mediterranean Sea. This visual study quests for new understandings of four of today’s geopolitical conflicts by searching for geographic, literal and metaphorical symmetries in and around their areas. Using images, documents, maps and other visual evidence we drew four imaginary lines that connect parallel points in two countries at a time. The axes’ origin, is always located in the Mediterranean Sea halfway between the two coasts, marked by a water float (buoy). The axis lines we drew between Cyprus and Israel, Greece and Turkey, Morocco and Spain and Slovenia and Croatia offer new sections between countries or areas, which struggle to define boundaries and to solidify their borderlines. By formalizing the specific geographies into mirror reflections, contrasts and comparisons two sides have emerged. Through people, sites, and moments, the social topography, political climate and psychological landscape has been reflected and interpreted, sometimes unfolding new perspectives out of the known divisions in these contemporary conflicts.
Diplolingo*
Like land and water, walls and fences, the semantic sphere is another frontier in the process of re-bordering. We had special interest in drawing alternative lines within buffer zones and to develop other palettes in the grey areas. The research of the liminal spaces of today’s geopolitics is also a fascinating study of a new terminology that emerges in the fog of war; it is said, that it is politics by other means. Likewise, rhetoric, naming conventions, and other modes of lingual discourse are the new battlefields of unfinished histories.
* “Diplolingo,” William Safire, On Language, The New York Times, June 11 2006.