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ANOTHER BORDERLAND
Chia-Ying Chao

The Isle of Grain, UK + Fermosa, Taiwan






Another Borderland on Issuu.




‘Another borderland is a project of temporal poetry, swinging between the coastline of the UK, the Isle of Grain and my hometown, Formosa by a stream of consciousness. Another means different, borderland as a blurred area between two. The project aims at exploring the liminal space in the borderland of the UK, Taiwan, the tidal zone and my consciousness.

The book focuses on the dynamic relationship between two sites by illustrating scenes between Formosa and Grain, and high tide and low tide and different languages. The in-between movement reflects the fluidity of how Grain and I ingrain one another. The narration of Grain is constructed by roaming among its enormous earthwork landscape from the perspective of a Flaneur. The coastline scenarios as marks on the wall triggering memories of Taiwan expose the connection between the two sites. By repeatedly sewing the description of tidal movement between the poems of Grain and Formosa, it reflects the stream of consciousness and how I ingrain myself and readers into the temporal situation of Grain.

I intend to provoke the idea of what landscape of memory will be left in the faded frontline by constructing temporal subjective narrations between the edged land of England and Taiwan. The poetry also expresses the second battleground of memory in the specific disappearing frontier by sewing personal remembrance. By extracting the contexture from Grain - the natural phenomenon of the rising tide and various faded earthworks, I intend to endow the land as a dweller layering every incident by her body and how humans mark the landscape from the god perspective of view.

The heartbreaking beauty of the faded military landscape is a vehicle to evoke the notion of borders by triggering the remembrance of my hometown. The poems about Taiwan are based on histories in a different period to discuss our blurred position and the absolute borderline in the nation. It is constructed by diverse languages, such as Chinese, Taiwanese and Formosan to reflect the controversy of Taiwan’s belonging through the ages.

The image texts become another narration, which relates to the contents and creates a liminal space in interpretation as performative writing. The relation between poems and still images, pages and pages also lead to a flux in the liminal space of the artist book. Through unfolding and folding text layers, I intend to draw the audiences into the situ of absence and trigger their instant remembrance into a third space.’ 


Chia-Ying Chao
 

 

Echoes and Intersections is a collection of site-writings produced as part of the module Critical Spatial Practice: Site-Writing across the MA Architectural History, MA Situated Practice, and MA Historic Urban Environments dgree and PhD programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

The featured works take the reader through fixed spatial locations and buildings, and on temporal journeys across ambiguous lands and waters. Written simultaneously across the globe, our situated writing offers diverse perspectives and narratives on plural geographies, landscapes and cities, through pieces interwoven with multiple, intersecting threads.

Many of the works occupy edgelands, peripheries or crossing points, writing the boundaries of buildings, states or bodies. They explore homelands, homes and selves that have been deconstructed, revealed and returned to. Echoing with memories, histories and absent others, the sites written carry the voices of place and voices displaced or fragmented, which resonate through the materials of the land - mud, sand, sky and rock.

These writings can be read in any order, allowing connections to emerge differently upon each reading.

Curatorial committee: Toby Blackman, Chia-Ying Chao, Kanza Leghari, Charlotte Morgan & Rasha Saffarini. 

With thanks to Polly Gould, Jane Rendell and David Roberts.


Bloomsbury Festival 2021

In October 2021, participants from the class read from their work on Bloomsbury Radio as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2021, alongside Polly Gould, Jane Rendell, David Roberts and participants from the class of 2020.

Find the recordings on Soundcloud here.