Borderlands

Posted in Border, Hiking, International, Québec, Snowshoeing by virtualhiker on May 14, 2011

Last spring I was invited to begin working on a project for the Foreman Art Gallery, located at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Québec. The resulting exhibition Stanstead Project, or How to Cross the Border is concerned with geographical and geopolitical borders (as presented by artists Ursula Biemann , Christian Philipp Müller and myself). My work for this exhibition, which opened last week and runs until July 30, 2011, focuses specifically on the wilderness border zone surrounding the towns of Stanstead, Québec and Derby Line, Vermont. This border community has been radically altered since September 11th, 2001 by the implementation of CCTV, and increased border security among other policies. In juxtaposition to the carefully monitored townsite, there are hundreds of kilometers of wilderness where a six-metre-wide cutline separates Canada from the United States. Between September 2010 and February 2011 I explored this cutline through the landscape surrounding Stanstead, making photographs, video, and capturing GPS tracks along the way. Presented here is the documentation of my journeys, and the completed project with a curatorial statement by Geneviève Chevalier can be seen on my website here. If you are going to be passing through the Eastern Townships, take the opportunity to see the show and send me your opinion. If you have never visited Sherbrooke and Lennoxville before, they are quite charming places with plenty of sightseeing opportunities and culture.