BORDERS. IDENTITY AND TERRITORY
diploma project (MA)
concept
research
design
illustration
typesetting
The idea behind that book was simple – because we are all overwhelmed by the chaotic news about events taking place at UE’s borders, media provide conflicted opinions and no one has the answears or can’t even formulate right questions – I decided to go back to basics. With sociologist Paweł Starzec, we started collecting texts, data and documents that are referring to fundamental social knowledge. Among fragments of iconic work of Bourdieu or Scheffer’s “Second Homeland” we contain definitions of identity, migration or culture. Next to this solid theoretic introduction, I put some documents like "Convention relating to the Status of Refugees" and "The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States". There are also data about migration, but not the newest information, but from last 15 years, showing migration trends all over the world. I operate with contrast by putting huge list of all the world’s border barriers next to the Schengen’s map. There is no single photograph in the book, because the iconography of refugee crisis is so strong that became a part of our visual (pop) culture.
At the end of the work I saw that one part was missing – the personal context of all that research. This is why the last part of the book is my interview with Draginia Nadaždin, the director of polish branch of Amnesty International.
Project has an ascetic form, kept only with black and white, except last (context) part which is printed with white ink on deep blue paper. The idea behind the designing process is consistent with my general approach to keep this book clear, formal and informational.
Full PDF of the book is available on request.
photo: pawelstarzec.com