I have been thinking about fences a lot lately. Recently, as I posted before, my neighbor tore down my fence and all I wanted was to have it replaced. It’s crazy how the world works. It took me some time to laugh at my self. While I was hoping for a new fence, I was developing an installation in my head that would involve a red, barbed-wire fence placed through the center of a gallery.
My father always said that fences don’t work. They don’t. You can see the Great Wall of China from space and though it may be something to behold, it did not work. The Berlin Wall is another example.
Walls are built to keep people in, to keep people out and sometimes for protection. I think I felt exposed without the fence in my back yard. It served as a form of protection for me.
However, recently, a neighbor of mine, who has a very tall wooden fence, was robbed. Cloaked by the fence, the robbers emptied all of the valuables from the house in one afternoon. Some other neighbors saw the van, but could not see the robbery through the fence. It didn’t protect them.
There has to be another way to live in a world without fences where there is respect for space and culture.
