The Border Projects: 24.6 Mile Walk
24.6 miles
the length of the coastal border of Gaza
walked on May 24, 2015 from Troy, NY to Easton, NY for 9 hours
filmed by John Yost; photographed by Ray Felix and Michael Cunningham
view 7 minute excerpt of 27 minute video documentation
As part of my ongoing work responding to geographic and political borders, I completed several walks the lengths of the borders of Gaza. The walks are an attempt to look at the events surrounding the Israel/Gaza conflict and understand my own physical relationship to space and land within the context of my present geographic location as well as to explore my own physical boundaries and limitations.
Although the catalyst for this project is the Israel/Gaza conflict, I am interested in the implications of a created “border” in other areas of the world as well, including the colonial borders drawn on the continent of Africa, our own American borders with Mexico and the demarcated borders of American Indian reservations throughout the US. These invisible lines often manifest in the form of a fence, a wall, or purely a line drawn on a map, but also extend to racial, cultural, and economic divides within a specific location.
For this walk, I began at the Hudson River in Troy, NY, where I live and work. I walked continuously north for 24.6 miles, following a path parallel to the river and ending at the river. At the end of the walk, I was only met with exhaustion--not with border patrol, gates, weapons, or a physical wall as I would have been in Gaza. I questioned what it felt like to cover this amount of space with my own body, how the journey would differ from one geographic location to another, what it means to be an American observing this conflict from the safety of my own location, what it might feel like to know that I was confined to that amount of space, what my own relationship to land and space has been, what my own physical and psychological borders might be. I hoped that moving the physical distance with my own body might help me understand something that my mind will never fully comprehend.
the length of the coastal border of Gaza
walked on May 24, 2015 from Troy, NY to Easton, NY for 9 hours
filmed by John Yost; photographed by Ray Felix and Michael Cunningham
view 7 minute excerpt of 27 minute video documentation
As part of my ongoing work responding to geographic and political borders, I completed several walks the lengths of the borders of Gaza. The walks are an attempt to look at the events surrounding the Israel/Gaza conflict and understand my own physical relationship to space and land within the context of my present geographic location as well as to explore my own physical boundaries and limitations.
Although the catalyst for this project is the Israel/Gaza conflict, I am interested in the implications of a created “border” in other areas of the world as well, including the colonial borders drawn on the continent of Africa, our own American borders with Mexico and the demarcated borders of American Indian reservations throughout the US. These invisible lines often manifest in the form of a fence, a wall, or purely a line drawn on a map, but also extend to racial, cultural, and economic divides within a specific location.
For this walk, I began at the Hudson River in Troy, NY, where I live and work. I walked continuously north for 24.6 miles, following a path parallel to the river and ending at the river. At the end of the walk, I was only met with exhaustion--not with border patrol, gates, weapons, or a physical wall as I would have been in Gaza. I questioned what it felt like to cover this amount of space with my own body, how the journey would differ from one geographic location to another, what it means to be an American observing this conflict from the safety of my own location, what it might feel like to know that I was confined to that amount of space, what my own relationship to land and space has been, what my own physical and psychological borders might be. I hoped that moving the physical distance with my own body might help me understand something that my mind will never fully comprehend.