No Man's Land
Using the triangular coordinates of a longstanding territorial dispute between Chile and Peru (1), “No-man’s-Land” explores the subtraction of territory as a subversion of the current politicized rhetoric towards the possibility of re-think border condition.
The project’s starting point was the impossibility of finding diplomatic solution to border conflicts in South America during recent decades, triggering international trials involving large amounts of time and money.(2) “No Man’s Land” explores –by contrast- a crude subtraction of one of those territories: a triangular area in strange legal ambiguity. Thus, the operation allows the formation of a captive ocean inlet: a triangular water-mirror artefact where the only possible confrontation would be two beaches overlooking one country from another.
The operation admits challenging the reductive construction based on the polarized rivalries between Peru and Chile originated at war long ago. Thus- as a political decision- the project explores its ability to withstand the course of time and sees in the possibility of border’s future obsolescence, the maximum possible usage; a transition from the rubble of a political conflict to a seaside place set in bi-national coast. Rather than a solution for the border, “No Man’s Land” -as an aporia- contemplates with this simple operation the possibility of the border’s dissolution.
(1). The controversy behind the project is that of the terrestrial triangle: 37,000 m2 of disputed land between the Milestone Nº1 and the low tide line. The case derives from the trial before the International Court of Justice of Peru and Chile’s maritime dispute and its verdict in 2014.
(2). Between 2008 and 2014, the State of Chile spent us $ 16.5 million in connection with the defense before the International Court of Justice on the maritime dispute (La Tercera, 2014).
