Lou Horiot de la Panneterie
Back from the Border
2024, Bard College Berlin
This work addresses the volunteers’ experience of coming home after a period of volunteering. It deals with the specific border separating France and the United Kingdom along the Channel sea. The project is inspired by testimonies of former volunteers of the organization Utopia 56 in Grande Synthe, including myself. In a context of such brutal and daily violence against people on the move, the witnessing of such harassment and inhumanity against refugees leaves traces in the volunteers’ minds. Volunteers often struggle with the feeling of uselessness and helplessness, where all efforts made to help and support people in exile don’t repair the harm and violence imposed by the state at the border. The project represents different phases of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, guilt, anger and rage, but also insists on the importance of friendship and support between former volunteers who shared moments at the border together.
The use of photographs draws on Roland Barthes’ concept of punctum, which works like a small injury, like the pinch of the needle. The punctum catches and monopolizes your attention in a photograph, in a similar way in which traumatic memories can take you away from the present. The use of written texts recalls personal diaries held by some volunteers during and after their experience at the border, and intends to approach memories and experiences of former volunteers as a complementary, personal and sensible archive of the border.
