Boundary Exercise (On Perambulation)

Elizabeth M. Webb
2022-10-21

0
8 min

Boundary Exercise… positions land surveys, surveying instruments and plat maps as tools of a Western colonial agenda that helped establish and maintain the power dynamics of white supremacy. Evolving from this conceptual foundation, this film thinks through the ways that plant life can provide liberatory models for how our bodies might also subvert these structures of power and control. The film utilizes 264 feet—7 minutes and 20 seconds—of 16mm film, which is the distance of the perimeter of a square chain (a surveying measurement). I buried distances of the film along the property boundary lines of former plantation land in Alabama that is deeply connected to my family, inviting a reciprocal and collaborative relationship with the material itself.