Stationary Coexistence

A border is made by both sides.

The shore belongs neither to the sea nor to the land, and yet it is made of both. The sea keeps returning, the land stops it, and between them the shore takes shape. Each stays what it is.

Stationary Coexistence divides each of its images between two expanses. Each is wholly itself, and they never mix. From one work to the next, what changes is not what they are, but the share each one holds.

The limit is not laid down from outside: it is born of contact. Everything that changes is concentrated on it: it is there that light separates, that matter splits, that colour tips over.

Two countries. Two languages. Two people who share a life without merging. One can hold two belongings without sacrificing either; but at the border, something is always paid: an accent, a translation, a silence.

This coexistence was not settled once and for all. It holds because something keeps circulating between the two. Should that stop, it does not end: it sets.

What separates two sides is also what holds them.

The Conceptual Ground

A border has no matter of its own: it is made only of the meeting of two sides, and belongs to neither. Yet it is what gives each side its outline. Without it, there would not be two domains, only a mixture.

This limit stays in place because something passes through it without pause, like a standing wave in a mountain stream, made of water that never stops. This is what stationary means. Holding has a cost: it continuously consumes a part of what circulates, and that expense is concentrated on the line. It withstands small pushes without moving. Beyond a certain threshold, it gives, and never returns exactly to its place.

On either side, nothing varies; everything happens on the line. And often a figure stands there: against a wall, at the water’s edge, on a ridge. It belongs to neither side. It stands where the two touch.

The produced limit

The line

What holds it

Holding two belongings is never settled. Two people can merge until they no longer know who is who, or drift apart until they no longer exchange anything. One language can absorb the other, or close itself to it. A country can shut itself in, or stop regulating what passes through it. In each case, the coexistence ends. It holds only in between: enough exchange to stay alive, enough limit to stay two.

What separates two sides is also what holds them.

A life between two countries is rarely divided equally: one can spend almost all one’s time on one side and belong fully to the other. The share changes; the belonging does not. From one work to the next, the series varies this share, never the nature of the two sides.

Staying two

The share