NIEMANDSLAND [2022]
Niemandsland is an information design project that aims to unveil the economic interests in Baarle Nassau (Netherlands) and Baarle Hertog (Belgium) by looking at the split between the two countries. The two intertwined municipalities make up 29 distinct enclaves and exclaves. Niemansdland is the name of the Belgian enclave number 22. Looking at the borders sheds light on the complex division of these two municipalities that make up the town of Baarle. A territory torn in between nations, cultural identities, contrasting policies, and economic interests. But also a peculiar example of successful conviviality, urged by the very geopolitical configuration of the two municipalities which was considered a case study that exacerbates the frictions typically created by national borders. Citizens of both Hertog and Nassau, have been asked to draw a map of the two towns by heart, to name a few: the two mayors, the woman that lives in a home split by the border and has therefore a double nationality, the chairman of Baarle's tourist agency. These drawings make the covers of the eight different pamphlets of the project. All together displayed on a board, they mimick Baarle's tourist agency display of its history, in the aim of reinterpret it through more contemporary reading, as an extreme case study that helps higlighting and exacerbating the tensions created by historical, fictional national borders. Ideated and developed with Valentine Scherer.
