Crossing Borders / Curriculum Link / Middle and Senior Level Thhinking and Philosophy
Middle and Senior Level Thinking and Philosophy
The questions and activities in this section of the resource have been designed for use in conjunction with Victoria Essential Learning Standards (VELS) Thinking Processes, VCE Philosophy and The Arts section of the Theory of Knowledge component of the International Baccalaureate.
Crossing Borders Commentaries
At the heart of philosophy are borders . To question, to criticise, to interrogate - these all involve trespassing on someone's ideological turf, sometimes smashing the barriers they've built around their truths. To do philosophy is to cross borders incessantly. But philosophy also produces its own ideas and ideals - it erects new borders , and then these too are torn down by peers or descendants.
To define itself, each culture creates its borders in the form of rituals, traditions and laws. We are all, in the course of our separate and collective lives, both creators of, and created by, our respective cultures. There has never been a completely bounded culture- some people have always managed to cross over. The greatest strength and beauty in any culture stems from and is yet tested by these crossings.
Sound artist and researcher
Sound bleeds, it moves through continents under the ocean through walls and above the stratosphere. Its essence and evanescence demands openness to difference, and it can trigger the past present and future worlds in an instant. Sound art unites the senses, crossing the borders of the eye and the ear. Auditory environments such as sound installations are places where complete mind body immersion dissolves all borders through moving through sound and sculpture in a revelatory experience. Listening is culturally framed for us all but by spending time with each other's sounding worlds, new knowledges and experiences can be shared. Sound is temporal so one must take risks every moment to capture the passing instant and understand it. By being attentive to the sounds around us, the borders of traditional scribal knowledge are transcended and the experience of being in a sounding world becomes a constant challenge without borders . The job of a sound artist is to creatively frame these elements, juggling sound place time and culture. When collaborating in cross cultural bands such as the Back to Back Zithers, musical elements which could be considered borders often become springboards for new compositions and improvisations providing there is respect for the authentic voices.
At the heart of teaching, what questions are there? What needs? What risks?
What stops us from thinking or doing certain things?
At what point can one stop asking questions and crossing over borders ?
At the heart of learning, where are there limits?
How can a student (of philosophy, let's say) approach the world with openness?
If all is possible, are there borders ?
Looking for new ways to streamline the business to improve efficiency relative to the competition.
Breaking into new markets to expand client bases, selling financial products to everyone from cotton farmers in South America to Governments in Africa.
Creating innovative new products across a variety of asset classes that have application in the market and are lucrative to trade.
Professor of Law
While it may once have been true that nations' legal systems were more or less insulated from one another, it is no longer the case.
Since the Second World War, the world has witnessed the inexorable rise of international law. And this law, crossing the borders of all nations, is making its impact on very many aspects of our government and our society.
Think, for example, of the law of international trade, which is now regulated internationally by the World Trade Organization and bilaterally in a host of free-trade agreements. And, just as importantly, think of the international law of human rights. The principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are now embedded to a greater or lesser extent in the legal systems of almost every country on the globe. These borders are well and truly crossed. There is no going back.
For an architect, a line on a page may signify a route of passage, the beginning of a shadow or the end of a wall, as in a model, a piece of material may signify a partition, structural beam or facade. As architects, we are obliged to cross the borders between these signifiers, or modes of representation, and in doing so we begin to understand their unique qualities and the way in which they give an understanding of the project in conception. For example, a specific relationship between two objects, which may be invisible on the page, may be highly obvious when represented in a model. A more complete project begins to emerge when the exploration of and transition between these modes of representation becomes more fluid.
Curator of Contemporary Art
borders enclose spaces, circumscribe ideas, define certain practices and often restrict movement. For me, as a curator, the idea of crossing borders means looking at the ways in which artists' works alert us to the extraordinary world, and to aspects of ourselves that we didn't know. The present is dominated by various submissions or resistances to the homogenising power of globalisation. Artists are responding to the crises of social and environmental instability by using their radically disparate cultural and political contexts to remind us of the necessity of difference and alternative visions and lifestyles. Crossing borders means taking us out of our comfort zones. For me, crossing borders means resisting global conservatism, but it also means maintaining certain ethical codes in a world in which ethics and morality are so easily subverted through abuses of power. Artists who cross the conventional borders of aesthetics, disciplines, practices, theories, emotion, identity proscription, subject matter, modes of representation, and the private-public divide, enter into unknown territory in their work. In doing so artists remind all of us that we will do well to keep our eyes and our minds open.
Who places borders - arbitrary lines drawn by a political or economic situation or legislator distant from ordinary people, their lives and their situations? People from outside, immigrants, have to experience a series of unpleasant conditions, numbers, interminable queues, to obtain a new life far from their place of origin. Any sense of belonging is illusive. Undesirable work is their reward. We do not integrate with them because we are so locked into our own lives, in what we believe to be better or more important. We differentiate between those from there and those from here, we distrust that which we do not know.
But we forget that these people are in exile. If they were happy in their country they would not leave, to be nobody in a country that is not theirs. We must respect and learn to coexist, and try to understand what is unfamiliar to us. We should imagine what it means to leave your family, food, scents and music only to be greeted with arrogant glances because they are outsiders and we are from here.
There are many different kinds of borders. These can be political, religious, geographic, psychological, cultural, moral etc. Some borders are constructed (and formalised in law) with the aim of preventing transgression, while others are devised to encourage crossings. borders in the Arts need to be crossed and destroyed in order to expand human consciousness while borders in law need to be respected for the health of human beings.
Lecturer in Australian Art History
What's a border for? Keeping things out, keeping them in? Letting you know where not to go? Sometimes the lines are there to be seen; a clear demarcation exists. Other times, it's not that simple. My favourite borders are those invisible, shifting ones. They force you to think - to work things out or work them through. These borders produce creative collaboration, producing things and moving on.
Art today - the big questions and ideas
Discuss the following questions with reference to the interviews with the artists, and their biographies on this site, and the artworks on this page.
Study the artwork from Reconstruction, 2003 by Bani Abidi
Study the artwork, Reverend on ice, 2005, by Yinka Shonibare
Study the artwork Hunter-gatherer, 2004-05 by Lorraine Connelly-Northey
Study the artwork Layang layang putus tali from the Horizon series, 2003 by Yee I-Lann
Study the artwork Porno image, 2005 by eX de Medici