Frontiers

'Crossing a frontier is quite an emotive thing to do an imaginary limit, made material by a wooden barrier which as it happens is never really on the line that it purports to represent' George Perec, Species of Spaces and other Pieces, 1974 This project looks at those areas of the UK that we could classify as contemporary frontiers; particularly the docks of the South East coast. The borders of this country are much discussed and are a greatly contested political ground. Their porosity is of great concern to both UK citizens and those wanting to make the UK their home. These frontiers are not a clearly drawn line but should of course be envisaged as a border zone. But what exists in these Marchlands (as Marc Auge refers to them)? Frontiers pays specific attention to the docks at Tilbury and Dover both of which have been documented heavily in the news. This project aims to cast a poetic eye over the structures that exist in these spaces - How are these boarders constructed, signposted, policed, managed and maintained? Marchlands never open out on to totally foreign worlds - what kind of view do we, as residents of the UK, have looking out? And what do these borders tell us about the way we are seen from the outside.