Lines, warning signs and barriers

 

Hazard tape

I have in the past posted on the use of various adhesive tapes as drawing materials and pointed to the fact that certain artists have used tapes as spatial barriers or to highlight an awareness of something. The making of warning signs is an aspect of visual communication that human beings have been doing for a long time, and other animals and plants have clearly been doing this for millions of years before we evolved. This issue lies at the heart of so much inter species and intra species communication, and is well worth spending some time thinking about how it might affect thinking about how we communicate, especially in a time of imminent danger and a worry about our relationship with an increasingly unstable world. 

Warning tape describing the space of the street

First of all though it is useful to remind ourselves of how good a raiser of spatial awareness warning tape is. Because of its bright colour and dashed line appearance, it operates is as if it is not just a line used to define the space that it passes through, but is also a symbolic line that has an attached narrative. It is as if we have drawn a zigzagging line between significant elements of street furniture, in order to not only highlight how the space can be seen but also how it can be symbolically understood. 

A drawn line works its way through the space of a cluttered street

Artists such as Monika Grzymala use tape for its ability to make us aware of space. However as it crosses the spaces it defines, it can also become a barrier. 

Monika Grzymala

Sometimes tape also has a repeated phrase printed on it to reinforce the message

Lines also define boundaries. They have two sides and this can lead to inclusion and exclusion. 

The use of lines to create closed boundaries in a set diagram

A barrier that stretches along the border of Hungary

Barriers are also put up because an animal wants to signify that territory belongs to them and that it could potentially be dangerous to step into the space that is seen as belonging to them. 

A territorial model of coyote populations. Location data for coyote from different packs denoted by different colours. Animals move avoiding foreign scent marks that are laid down by members of the various packs, as they do they define separate territories as clearly as humans do when setting out their territories. 

Boundaries of African tribal territories 

It is fascinating to see how tribal boundaries in Africa differ from national boundaries as set out by a map of countries. 

Political map of Africa

Barriers

These two barriers feel very different, however they are both signs of inclusion and exclusion. The spiral of razor wire set on top of the spike topped fence, alongside lengths of barbed wire, really does say KEEP OUT, but so does the classical red rope and glass screen of the museum. The tone might be different and the situation in the museum is of course much more refined, but real open door policies are in fact rare. So how can artists confront these issues and at the same time make interesting work. 

Ana Teresa Fernández: 2011

In 2011 Ana Teresa Fernández worked to paint out the US–Mexican border at Tijuana. She did this dressed in a black cocktail dress and spike heels, using Martha Stewart living light blue exterior paint. As she painted out the harsh black lines of the fence, the newly painted barrier seems to disappear into the sky. However, despite the blue paint and transgressive intervention, the border fence still exists. The sea and the beach beyond the fence is the same sea and beach that exists on the side from which she paints it, a sign that it is the earth itself that has true unity and that the barrier's linear display of sovereign territoriality is one of hubris and is in many ways a disrespectful gesture to the Earth on which we live. As Renée Marlin-Bennett says, 'The blue paint that fades into the sky only makes the border look less ominous, and perhaps that is more sinister still: the barrier that cannot be seen is more dangerous than one that can be'. (Accessed from: https://theartsjournal.net/2019/10/27/marlin-bennett-2/)

See also:

Lines in the road

Burkina Faso

Drawing using tape

Object Orientated Ontology

The first ever drawings

Metaphor and creation