BCA-N: Is it Finished?

BCA-N: Is it Finished?

In Border Encyclopedia, the map fulfils more a role as a research instrument rather than an object generated at the end of the project merely to share and explain the content of the project. 

Firstly, the BCA-I’s value lies in the use of the instrument during a BCA. The BCA-I takes an active and performative position during the fieldwork. But once the BCA-I is filled in and ‘finished’ it only is a little part of the BCA-N. Secondly, the BCA-N on its turn, is only productive if one starts making and composing maps with the separated strips. Now, who is the author? Who is making? who is gaining knowledge and who is reflecting? These are not different persons: they are all interwoven through the whole project and anyone who gets in touch with the Border Encyclopedia. So, there is no final map and there is no final conclusion but there is an archive with material gained through a specific research instrument and the possibility to compare and navigate through the border experiences. 

  • Reshuffling within this specific Border Encyclopedia mode of representation is prerequisite to produce unprecedented insights about the border experience. According to Rheinberger, knowledge changes and can take many forms depending its context and situation. This recombining is inevitable to continue to surprise.1Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Biographies of Scientific Objects, Cytoplasmic Particles: The trajectory of a Scientific Object, 270 -294As such, he explains, the role of research objects might change as well. A completed BCA-I with all its strips mutates from a final result into one of the many parts necessary to set up the BCA-N and receives different identities throughout the process. As such, the Border Encyclopedia existing of BCA-I’s and the BCA-N movesalong, as it were, in parallel with the dynamic and ever-changing identity of the borders in border regions.

[1]Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Biographies of Scientific Objects, Cytoplasmic Particles: The trajectory of a Scientific Object, 270 -294.