Borders Barriers and Walls

R&D update:

Before the Midterm

Alongside of making the new spaces that I shared with you in my previous blog I was making something that represents the actual height of the wall. I always thought that the height of these walls is one of the most important qualities. It’s the height of those cement walls that stops you from seeing the people on the other side; dehumanize the other side of the wall. It is the height of the wall that casts a shadow on your house forever. Since dealing with heavy materials was not easy I decided to cut a piece of paper to the height of the wall and have it hang on the pass-way of people and observe their reaction and the changes it creates in their regular path. Unfortunately the scale and size of the paper was not something to easily maintain, therefor I decided just to hand it from anywhere possible. I thought at least I get an idea how tall this wall is. Bellow are a few pictures I have taken from that experiment. 

When I had the wall on the floor I tried photographing it but as I looked through the images I realized none of them do justice to the height of the wall therefor I decided to lie down on the paper so comparison helps visualizing the length so some extend. I am 5.4 foot/ 164 cm high.

This is what I presented for the midterm. The presentation went well, I got great feedback and people seamed very interested. 

Milestone 1:

After the presentation I was stuck. My spaces were very well received that I didn’t know what is the next step. I didn’t know what is next. Therefor I decided to set limitations for myself and chose something new to work with. Therefor I chose type. I set my first milestone a typography project. I thought it would be interesting to see how I can use Farsi or Arabic typography with English to communicate separation or division or the effects of them.

These images are some of my attempts to use type as an object. In cases I used reflection, shadow and light and in the third image I used type and image. Not only I was not happy with the results I could tell that I didn’t know what I was looking at. I didn’t have a goal.  Also the work I played with here means “ peace” that itself is a problem. At this stage the word peace does not have much to do with prodders and barriers because it is the study of the form and integration of the languages. 

So I decided to move away from the word “Peace”. I decided to use my name, my nationality and the word terrorist to work with. The reason why I chose these words is because I am being affected directly as an Iranian student studying in the US with all the invisible barriers that is created in the past 30 years. Sanctions are one of them. Being labeled as a terrorist just because you are born to a certain land. The fact that I have to go in loops to get money from Iran to the US for school tuitions, wait for days or in my case now for more than a month. Being rejected to open an account in the bank or more. 

Through these studies I wanted to see the effects of overlapping and try communicating how overpowering one is over the other one. For example the word terrorist overpowers my name (who I am) just because of my nationality.

I don’t find these studies as successful as I was hoping them to be. They feel forced and like many of my previous attempts I was trying very hard to make a statement and force a message. But I strongly believe in learning through process. Accidents through process are a great way to learn or to find a way to proceed to the next step. The integration between the wire and the text is what grabbed by attention the most in this study. I started using the quality of these thin wires and translate them into text using a new medium, drawing.

These drawings are quick studies of type but soon they became abstract drawings of a condition or a situation. They are very naive and very quick but I think they are engaging and very simple to understand. I used different strategies to communicate barriers. I used an actual metal wire representing barbwires and my hand as a placeholder for human body, and literarily tracked the effect of the wire on the lines that I drew (left Image). I raised the height of the wire and tracked the effect again (right Image). The higher the wire is the more distance it creates between the lines. 

I erased the line and tried connecting them back. The result was the bottom drawing. It was interesting that no matter how hard I tried to connect them without showing but once you separate two things in this case becomes impossible to connect them back like the beginning. 

Then I added point to the page and treated them as checkpoint and studied the effect of the checkpoint in movement of the line from left to right. I was quick happy with the result. It felt like I found a new medium for communication.

Also I decided to use the obvious divisions of San Francisco as existing invisible barriers to experiment my study.

I think these series of my study were successful not only because I received a good feedback but also because they were very simple. They did not feel forced.

Simultaneously with this idea I started working with the idea of a house an occupation and division within a sacred place, a home. I took a house plan and just made a model of that plan and started playing around with it. I placed my drawing under the plan and the results were not interesting at all, they look misplaced and irrelevant but what was interesting from these studies was introduction of a wall within the model.

I used paper to cut through the house plan, Photographed it from the front view and then from the top view. Looking into a situation from different angles says a lot about different ways we can look at a situation. The super slim page that created the separation became this barrier that not only didn’t let you see the rest of the place but also felt to tall and strong that stopped you from moving forward. These are all quick studies that can be used later on as a mean for communication. And of course this was not the end point of this study and it can look into much further.

I also tried looking into wires and creating separation within this space but I put it on hold there and moved back to my drawing and decided to look into them further. 

Milestone 2:

I started the investigation on the drawing with the map of San Francisco. Gave them checkpoints at the conduction of two borders. Based on the checkpoints I recreated a wall and draw the effects of the new wall on the divisions.

By drawing and emphasizing on the divisions I realized the closer you get to the middle of a division the further away you will be from the other divisions (isolation). 

I don’t think these studies were not good but the many decisions that I took would have many meanings within San Francisco. My intention was to pick the map of San Francisco because people could relate to it and maybe how it is to divide the city but the same reason ( a familiar place) would create many many more questions about the decisions I took. Therefor I decided to simplify the studies and I moved into simple square spaces that I didn’t need to analyze all the divisions. I could pick the center of the square and just assume everyone wants to move towards the center, where as in San Francisco my viewers might have argued and disagreed on the center of the city. At this point I wanted to study the drawing and their condition and not the reason behind the decisions. bellow are the example of some of my studies.

The milestone

The Milestone Paper: 

Interested in the separation of east (Middle East) and west after living in both places; At this stage I am looking into the meaning and effects of borders, barriers and walls between humans; not only their physical qualities but also their psychological and political implications. I am hoping to raise awareness or create a conversation around them. 

Based on my observations and research I decided to investigate two aspects of these divisions and their affects. One: the physical barriers that are built, such as west bank wall, Tijuana Wall, Berlin wall and many more. Two: I am looking into the hidden and invisible walls, such as language polemics used in a speech or television show, or passport as a hidden dividers and many more. Currently I am researching the two aspects individually but they may overlap at some point in the research.

The nature of this thesis is strongly political. Not only because the starting point of this research was the conflict between Palestine and Israel and the wall in West bank but also because these walls, both hidden and visible barriers, existence due to a political issue, or they hope to create one.

Born and raised in Tehran, I moved to the United Arab Emirates at 18 for higher education and for the hope of better future. I was looking for freedom. At the time freedom not wearing a scarf or Manto (a long cover to cover the body) was freedom. I considered myself an activist when I was living in Iran, defending women’s rights by getting involved in debated with other groups of youth or distributing presidential flyers around even though I was not even eligible to vote. But once I left Iran the definition of freedom changed. I was exposed to a bigger picture. Freedom to me was to get the right information and be free to make the right decision. During my stay there I met people from many nationalities, and soon I realized that the topic of my conversations changed. I was trying really hard defending my country and my people. What many knew and though of Iran was not true or at least it was not everything they should knew. So from complaining I moved to defending.

During the 8 years that I lived in the UAE I traveled to Lebanon, Sri Lanka, France, United States, Mexico, Frankfurt and Australia I observed and learned so much. But it was not until I started living in the USA that I found it necessary to look into the topic of barriers, borders and walls.

In June 2012 moved to the US, San Francisco about a year ago to study in California Collage of the Arts. Not too long after I moved I realized that I was not so much talking about Iran and Iranians but I was talking about the Middle East and defending that side of the world from the stereotypes. In my daily regular conversations I heard statements like " US needs to kill the bad people", " darling you are a good person but there are many bad people in your country" or " if the US doesn't take care of bad people another 9/11 is going to happen" and many more. I wondered how someone could allow himself or herself to think or believe that killing the “other” is ok. What made me pick this area, as my interest was another war between Israel and Palestine that broke out in October 2012. I watched what the media broadcasted, read all the comments and information that was going around in the news through television or internet at the time. It was very obvious to me that the information was creating a division between people. I observed how innocent civilian people of Palestine were pictured as dangerous humans that deserve to die. I never trusted news channels in Iran and always imagined how different they must be in the US. But digging deeper I was surprised. Watching the news and paying a close attention to the language used during the war made me remember the statements that I heard after my arrival here and I learned why people think that way. One of the most dangerous things that these mediums do is dehumanizing the “other” therefor the actions you take towards them is justified and no one would appose it. 

The process that I went through is as bellow:

My interest in the physical conflict narrowed me down to the west bank wall. This wall is built on the land of Palestinians and imprisons them within their own country.

As a result I have tried to re-create the effects and feelings created because of the creation of the wall within the 2D space using photography. I used light, depth of field to create the spaces. Even though the spaces were received positively and strongly I didn't spend enough time, investigating them and moved on. Quickly I placed silhouette figures within those spaces trying to add to the meaning behind them. My intention was to help people feel how it is to be in those spaces by interacting with the spaces. As soon as I did that it was clear that placing the figures within the spaces was not the right answer. I was saying too much, the figures were not helping the viewer feel anything but they were telling the viewer what to feel and that was not what I wanted to achieve. 

Since these walls are massive and very tall, scale is an important thing to communicate. I have created scale within my 2D images but, to imagine a scale is one thing and to feel it is another. Therefor as the second step I decided to use projector to enlarge the spaces and allow the viewer experience the scale and hopefully the space. I managed to achieve the feeling of scale to some extend but I feel the ephemeral feeling of the projector failed to communicate the importance of these barriers and spaces. The west bank wall, where it divides the resident, is 8 meters tall and made out of concrete. The material and the length blocks any view of the other side. Also, since the wall goes all the around the west bank, It creates a huge scale prison that people need permission and visas in order to go beyond the wall, they will be checked every time they want to pass the wall like one would before entering or exiting a prison. The wall and the event mentioned earlier create the feeling of entrapment and it challenges hope. Therefor my next step would be finding the right way to communicate the missing information. Maybe creating these images in a large scale, ideally real size will be a way to continue the experiment and research. I may bring back the projectors somewhere down the line but for now I think I will move away. I have to say the cost of building large-scale spaces is a little challenging for me. 

Further to all above, looking back at my earlier spaces and work, I think there are qualities that I can use and take advantage of that I abandoned too early. The images said a lot even though they were simple and minimal, in ways they communicated some of the feelings I wanted to create with the least shown and said; the playfulness of the light and more. Looking back at the gif file made me wonder how I can go back to the light and wall experimentation. Therefor part of the next step I would like to look back on simplicity and minimal. 

As of right now, I have not explored the second aspect of the wall as much as I hoped to, the hidden/ invisible walls. The only study in that aspect is mapping out the language used by Netanyahu in UN against Iranian president and is viewed as a wall to making peace. I definitely need more help and investigation in that area. 

Milestone one: Recreation of a feeling within a space

At this stage I would like to investigate typography as a medium to communicate barriers and walls. I believe bringing typography into the spaces that I am creating will help engaging the audience with the work. Through this milestone I will be creating a model or a space that I can use to create the spaces using typography. The outcome with the 4 studies that I think is conveying the messages that I want.

Milestone two: Language Visualization

Exploring the notion of Borders and find a visual system of mapping them.