Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – and with a sharp acceleration following the 9/11 attacks – the number of inter-state border walls around the world has risen from 15 to 77 (Hjelmgaard, 2018). This brick-and-mortar approach to combatting global terrorism has long been proven ineffective at increasing national security, as well as being a drain on state resources and a significant contributor to citizens’ negative attitudes towards immigration (Schewe, 2019). However, the brick and steel facade of border walls has remained a salient feature in the discourse surrounding international relations worldwide since the turn of the century.
The object that I chose to include as part of a 3D digital collection (containing culturally, socially and environmentally significant items from the 21st Century) is a brick. The brick takes its place in the collection as a symbolic object, representing this huge upsurge in border wall construction and anti-immigration sentiment. It encapsulates what I feel is the dualistic nature of the 21st Century’s zeitgeist: The driving force of rapid technological advancement paired with the anxiety and unwillingness to leave behind the ways of the past. Élisabeth Vallet’s extensive writing on border studies supports the idea that inter-state walls embody this duality. In her words, “spaces where walls are erected combine both the modernity of a new norm of globalization and the archaic dimension of a feudal fortification” (Vallet 2020, p. 8).
The term given to the scholarly study of objects is material culture, which has two key approaches: object-centred and object-driven (Herman, 1992). Object-centred focuses on the physical qualities of objects, whereas object-driven considers the ways in which objects relate to humans and narratives.
Through the lens of an object-driven biography, it becomes clear that my brick embodies more than just itself; the act of digitisation transforms its story and purpose, and it becomes part of a wider narrative. In this regard, the brick gains agentic value, according to Janet Hoskins. Taking an anthropological approach and speaking in the context of indigenous artwork, she argues that “in certain conditions,” objects “can be or act like persons” (2006, p. 81). While the conditions themselves are undefined, I would propose that any object can be endowed with agency when it becomes a storytelling piece, representative of a historical, social or cultural narrative.
But what agency did my brick have before I came across it? What narrative did it contain? It was found in some bushes on the grounds of the disused Radium Rubber factory in Maastricht, crawling with insects and spores, so I carried it home at arm’s length. It sat in my kitchen for a few days until I photographed it, processed it using computer software, and uploaded it to an online collection. A few days after I have finished with it, I plan to bring it back to the waste ground and leave it somewhere inconspicuous. This, as far as I will ever know, is its life story.
Anthony Harding proposes that the creation, life, and “death” of an object (through its disposal or disuse) is equal in symbolic and narrative value to the life of any human being (2016, p. 8). The life cycle model of object biographies emphasises that, while an object may be mass-produced or entirely utilitarian in its designed purpose, it becomes endowed with individual history and unique character through time. Every object has endless possible trajectories and becomes gradually disentangled from its standardised purpose at the moment of its production (Dannehl, 2018, p. 124).
Who knows where my brick has been? Clearly it was mass-produced, but the location where it was found suggests that it led a different life than what it was designed for, or than what its fellow mass-produced bricks were destined for. It ended up somewhere unique because, according to the life cycle model, objects embody a kind of entropy; who knows where they’ll end up?
One thing that I can confidently suggest is that my particular brick has not been used in any construction work or protest activity in relation to border walls and immigration. When I came across it, there was no known sociopolitical discourse attached to it. It was, and in some ways still is, just a brick. However, according to object biography theories, objects “do not only exist in their physical manifestation”, but also in a “discursive space”, and their meanings can be adapted and reconstructed through how they are documented by humans (Dannehl 2018, p. 126).
My brick, for all intents and purposes, did not exist discursively before I decided to include it in the digital collection. As Dannehl notes, a key feature of utilitarian objects like the brick is the limited historical, cultural, and economical value bestowed on them by society. Because of this limited value, such objects’ life stories are unlikely to have been told or written down through their histories (Dannehl 2018, p.127). Any brick or wall could have fulfilled the purpose that I had intended, because according to an object-driven approach, the discourse emerges from the narrative attached to the object rather than from the object itself (Herman 1992).
In the context of this collection, the discourse emerging from the brick is incendiary, divisive, and emblematic of the 21st Century. It deals with an issue that is both discursively and physically polarising. While the biography of the object does not have any known significance prior to my discovery of it, its digitisation catalyses a shift in its agentic and narrative properties. It is now a signifier of its time period; a visual symbol of the walls dividing nations, the bubbling hate between neighbours, and the breakdown of the globalised harmony that was promised to us at the beginning of our digital age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dannehl, K. (2018). Object biographies: From production to consumption. In History and material culture: A student’s guide to approaching alternative sources. Routledge. https://virtualexhibition.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/dannehl_object_biographies.pdf
Harding, A (2016). Introduction: Biographies of things. Distant Worlds Journal, (1), 5-10. https://doi.org/10.11588/dwj.2016.1.30158
Herman, B. L. (1992). The Stolen House. The University Press of Virginia.
Hjelmgaard, K (2018, May 24). From 7 to 77: There’s been an explosion in building border walls since World War II. USA Today. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/24/border-walls-berlin-wall-donald-trump-wall/553250002/
Hoskins, J. (2006). Agency, biography, and objects. In Tilley, C. et al. (eds.) Handbook of Material Culture, pp. 74-84. Sage Pub. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288915635_Agency_biography_and_objects
Schewe, E (2019, February 28). Border Walls are Symbols of Failure. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/border-walls-are-symbols-of-failure/
Vallet, É (2020). State of border walls in a globalized world. In A. Bissonnette et al. (eds.) Borders and Border Walls, pp. 7-25. Routledge.