Borderscaping the Oder-Neisse Border: Observations on the Spectral Character of This Current Between Times in Border Art

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a critical analysis of contemporary artworks and initiatives directly referencing the Oder–Neisse border and portraying the two rivers as border rivers. River borders are interpreted as human constructs. The artworks are analyzed from a interdisciplinary perspective in their geopolitical, cultural, and historical context via theories of border art (Amilhat-Szary, Dell’Agnese, Guinard), critical border studies and borderscaping (Brambilla, Schimanski), border assemblage (Sohn), the aesthetic regime (Rancière), hauntology (Derrida), the boundary object (Häkli), realms of memory (Nora), spatial semiotics and sociology of space (Massey, Löw), phenomenology, geopoetics, memory studies, and cartography in its role as a subversive strategy for mapping borderlands. The Oder-Neisse border in border art not only triggers border narratives reflecting the historically complex German-Polish relations, but also has the potential to redefine binding aesthetic regimes, address taboos, and create counter-hegemonic borderscapes. This art reveals clearly the relative newness of the Oder–Neisse border, imposed in 1945, which continues to impact interpretation of the history of Polish-German relations.

KEYWORDS:

• German-Polish border region
• Oder-Neisse border
• border art
• borderscaping
• aesthetic regimes
• border narrative

Acknowledgements

This contribution was written as part of the academic project “The Borderland as Transition Space. Artistic and curatorial strategies on the Polish-German border in the context of foreign cultural policies and border art (1989–2019),” financed by National Science Center Poland and conducted with Prof. Dr. Burcu Dogramaci (LMU München) in the years 2019–2022. Translated from the Polish and the German by Jessica Taylor-Kucia. I am grateful for the comments of an anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Unless otherwise noted in the bibliography, all translations from Polish and German into English are by the translator of the contribution (Jessica Taylor-Kucia).

2 This sentence is a paraphrase of Holt’s thesis about the River Tweed marking the border between England and Scotland.

3 In this text the term “specter” is used after Derrida’s concept of “hauntology.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by narodowe centrum nauki: [grant number 2018/31/B/HS2/00553].