Imaginary Landscapes

Baltensperger + Siepert 2015

Collage, 68cm x 46cm
C-Print on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper
12 Landscapes, Edition of 2 + 1AP

Imaginary Landscapes is based on photographs of national borders that Baltensperger + Siepert collected on the Internet. To remove the borders, the artists physically cut the photographs into pieces and then rearranged what was left to create new, imaginary landscapes.

From the occasionally poor quality and low resolution of the images, viewers can see that the pictures were taken from the Internet. The algorithms of online search engines, such as Google, Baidu, or Bing, helped to shape the pool of images Baltensperger + Siepert use as an archive for this series.

Accordingly, the images represent the borders most talked and written about—zones of conflict, and regions renegotiating national and cultural borders.

Through the gestures of removing border installations, the deformation of the original frame of the photograph, and the recreation of alternative landscapes, Baltensperger + Siepert open up a field for imagination to claim its space and create ways of thinking about what is in between.