Bordering bodily experience / Experiencing border bodily

Abstract

The chapter examines the border as a spatial, temporal, bodily, and mnemonic condition rather than merely a political or physical line of separation. Focusing on the divided urban context of Nicosia/Lefkoşa, it argues that borders shape everyday experience by restricting movement, vision, contact, and memory, while also producing intensified forms of perception and awareness.Through a phenomenological perspective, the text challenges dualistic understandings of body and mind, emphasizing that the border is experienced through the whole body. Spatial congestion, folded temporalities, bodily limitation, and constrained memory are presented as key dimensions of border experience. The border is therefore interpreted not only as an instrument of division, but also as an existential and experiential condition that reorganizes how space is sensed, remembered, and inhabited.The chapter also considers artistic, performative, and architectural practices that engage with the buffer zone through movement, sound, memory, and bodily presence. These practices reveal the possibility of rethinking the border as a site of transformation. Rather than treating the border solely as a closed or static barrier, the chapter frames it as a dynamic field where alternative forms of connection, coexistence, and spatial imagination may emerge.