Talk
A moving border: Alpine cartographies of climate change
April 12 2019, 6.00pm
Book launch
"A Moving Border" is a book based on Italian Limes, a project by Studio Folder that maps the shifts of national boundaries as a consequence of melting glaciers in the Alps. The authors will talk about the book with Paola Antonelli, Joseph Grima, and Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt.
Italy’s land border follows the watershed that separates the drainage basins of Northern and Southern Europe. Running mostly at high altitudes, it crosses snowfields and glaciers—all of which are now melting as a result of anthropogenic climate change. As the watershed shifts so does the border, diverging from its representation on official maps. Italy, Austria, and Switzerland have consequently introduced the novel legal concept of a “moving border,” which acknowledges the volatility of geographical features once thought to be stable.
Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual (Studio Folder) have teamed up with Andrea Bagnato to author a book that shows how natural borders are produced through spatial and historical narratives—and hints at the challenges that global warming poses to Western conceptions of territory.
The book features a foreword by Bruno Latour, maps and unpublished documents from state archives, and contributions by Stuart Elden, Mia Fuller, Francesca Hughes, and Wu Ming 1.
