Border: Cracks in the Wall as Sonic Thresholds and Perceptual Interfaces
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Francesco Casanova
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Border is an audiovisual installation that explores how access to perception—what we can see or hear—is not always equal or guaranteed. Instead of telling a story about borders, the work creates a space where exclusion can be physically and sensorially experienced through light, fog, and sound. In this project, perception is treated as something that can be given or taken away, depending on where you are and how you move in the space.
The installation was shown in two different versions. One was silent, using fog and fragmented text projections that visitors had to move around to read. The other included an ultrasonic directional speaker that only a few people could hear—if they stood in the exact right spot. In both versions, visitors had to work to find clarity. Often, gaining access meant unintentionally blocking others, creating a kind of shared tension and struggle.
This reflects how real borders work—not just through walls or laws, but also through who gets to see, hear, and know. The project draws on ideas from thinkers like Steve Goodman (who writes about sound as power), Juliette Volcler (on sound as a weapon), and Brandon LaBelle (who talks about listening as a political act).
Artistically, Border sits between the poetic visual language of Yasuhiro Chida and the structural critique of Tania Bruguera. Like Chida’s Brocken, it uses light, and fragmented architecture to create a shifting perceptual field. But while Chida’s work invites a sense of wonder, Border uses the same tools to questioning the visitors. And like Bruguera, Border critiques systems of control and privilege—but it does so without being moralistic or explanatory. Instead, it lets the space itself communicate through sensory conditions.
Border doesn’t offer clear answers or emotional resolution. It doesn’t represent exclusion—it enacts it. The work invites you to feel what it’s like to be denied not just space, but understanding itself.
