LiminalSpaces

Azra Aksamija
Frontier Vest
The Frontier Vest examines how various signs of religious difference,and
of ethnic and gender segregation, could be creatively engaged in
rethinking, and potentially reconciling, the psychological and spatial
boundaries present today in frontier cities like Jerusalem and Sarajevo. By
probing the origins of these boundaries in relation to cultural, religious,
national and gender practices, as well as their spatial implementation,
this project aims to rethink the conceptual meaning of the term “boundary.”
In this context, the notion of a boundary will be understood as an
interactive “space” that may generate learning processes involving the
entities it divides, and thus allow for its own transformation.
This project aims to give artistic expression to the question of how
religious space can become a strategic tool for communicating differences,
and of how interdependence can become a possible tool for reconciliation.
The Frontier Vest is intended to foster a creative frontier zone, in which
boundaries are defined in a new and regenerative manner and transformed
into a fluid mediating ground. Numerous and complex segregation
practices can all benefit from this approach; this project, however, will
focus on offering perspectives for tackling religious issues.
The Frontier Vest is a hybrid combination of a contemporary vest and of
several kinds of ritual objects. This wearable prototype lends itself to
different uses, both sacred and secular. Referring to the shared histories
and belief systems of Judaism and Islam, the Frontier Vest can be
transformed either into a talit, a Jewish prayer shawl, or into an Islamic
prayer rug. Both possibilities create highly personal objects, which devout
believers can use in the course of religious ritual.
Originating in the nomadic life of Bedouins and informed by the historical
experience of exodus, the Frontier Vest also represents a minimalist form
of dress well-suited to the contemporary refugee. While the vest can be
worn by both men and women, its use in Jewish and Islamic religious
rituals is to be negotiated within the individual religious communities.
Although Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share the belief in one God,
belonging to one of these religions implies exclusion from the others.
Based on different religious practices, socio psychological boundaries
often generate spatial divisions, which in turn reinforce the existing
boundaries. The Frontier Vest allows for the personal expression of
different belief systems. Individual specimens of this form of wearable
architecture can also be combined to generate a communal space. Such
usage would require a minimal congregation of ten in Judaism (a minyan),
two in Islam (masjid) and three in Christianity. More importantly,
however, this individual territory may only be transformed into a
collective space by overcoming the mutual fear of otherness. 

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Azra Aksamija
Born 1976, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Architect and artist, based
in Cambridge, USA. Since fall 2004, she has been affiliated with
Massachuses Institute of Technology as a Ph.D. student in the
Department for History Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture/
AKPIA. She graduated from the Technical University Graz, Austria in
2001, and received her M. Arch from Princeton University, USA in 2004.
Her work has been widely published and exhibited at venues such as the
Generali Foundation Vienna (2002), Biennial de Valencia (2003), Berlin
Art Fair (2003), Graz Biennial of Media and Architecture (2003), Gallery
for Contemporary Art Leipzig (2003), and Liverpool Biennial (2004). She
is currently researching her dissertation on contemporary Islamic
architecture and the place of Islam in Western Europe and the United
States.
azra@mit.edu
hp://www.mit.edu/~azra/