Art Space as Borderline Interface

The avant-garde draws its name from the fragment of an army that raced to the walls of a fortress, spreading terror and disinformation, setting fire to the surrounding terrain. Into the no-man's land of negotiation, the borderlands of dispute, urban areas of poverty, neglect, so-called racial isolation, the artist prepares the way for speculators, dealers, police and boutiques. Despite the nominal efforts of Dada, Bauhaus, surrealists, constructivists, Lettrists, Situationists, Fluxus and more, Kreuzberg is now Berlin Mitte, Soho is a shopping mall, Saint Germain-des-Pres rivals the Marais in high rent. Is it possible to determine a practice that blazes a trail toward a less concrete borderline; not to an end of the dusty road and its famine or, even a new road's beginning but, off the road without blindfolded benefit of a four-wheeled tool? Maybe the practice must involve neither approach nor retreat. Maybe we need to permanently inhabit the borderlines; a borderline experience for a continuous infiltration by space through the electric body politic.