a line made by clearing andrey chernykh
National borders invade our mainstream news cycle – they have become more present in our cultural milieu with globalisation in apparent retreat, and with countries considering isolationist policies and building physical walls to keep others out. The global COVID-19 pandemic made borders ever more apparent as restrictions, preventing free movement between different countries, as we all shelter in place to curb the spread of the deadly virus. Historically and globally, the interface of a political border and the landscape that surrounds it has created unique places often defined by tension, control and militarism. The case of the Canada-USA border is quite unique, in its structure and management, as being the longest undefended border in the world – it therefore warrants a critical discussion of its place- making and the role it plays between the two countries. being there The Oregon Treaty of 1846 established the 49th parallel as the western section of the Canada-USA border, from Buffalo Point in Manitoba to Tsawwassen on the southern mainland of British Columbia. It is a roughly 2,000 km (mostly) straight, deforested line though the landscape. Known unofficially as ‘the slash’, this six metre wide treeless zone crosses everything from isolated islands to mountains. The line is cleared every six years for the sole purpose of making sure it is visible both from satellite and on the ground. It is a most compelling landscape to witness. Photographer Andreas Rutkauskas captured heavily monitored places as well as more wild corners of the western borderlands in his project Borderline . 1 He recounts the incredible porosity of the border — sometimes both swift and lengthy encounters with border patrol, on other occasions walking for hours along the cutline without impediment. While undefended, the border is nonetheless monitored under variety of surveillance technologies. Few have fully experienced the slash. Some of us get a glimpse of the clean cutline through the trees from a moving car, after having one’s documents inspected by the border agent. However, in the more forested areas of west part of the cut, the encounter with the border is one of the starkest. Deep forest changes to a narrow meadow of wild grasses, forbs and shrubs. Not only physically but sonically it is a different experience alltogether. The hollow sound of the forest changes, as if emerging out of an echo chamber into an open space of breezes and buzzing insects. It is less of a transition space but more of an interruption in an otherwise cohesive landscape. In other cases, the border would not present itself at all until explicitly defined by a sign or an obelisk – one of many old markers that denote the border, erected during the first land clearing and mapping of the 49th parallel between 1872 - 1874. The obelisks, a further sculptural component of an already sublime landscape, are scattered, due to imprecise surveying at the time, sometimes as far as 200 feet away from the border. Sometimes the line almost disappears, disguised by a piece of infrastructure like a road, or in some urban areas it can even serve as someone’s property line.
1 https://www.andreasrutkauskas.com/borderline
from the top: Cultus Lake, BC Whiskey Gap, Alberta Abandoned crossing, Big Beaver, Saskatchewan
all images courtesy of Andreas Rutkauskas
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 10
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