ABSTRACT
As a temporary project by the Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada, the sign stood only for four days after it was censored by overzealous city councilors who elected to remove it for fear of hurting local business and offending American visitors. The project was commissioned by the Art Gallery of Windsor and originally slated to stand as a four month public art project. Terada’s sign departed from the Cold War relic in a few critical ways, however. The Berlin sign was worded in the present tense “YOU ARE ENTERING THE AMERICAN SECTOR” and marked the line between East and West as an ideological frontier in Russian, German, French and English. Terada’s sign, by contrast, was worded in the past tense, “YOU HAVE LEFT THE AMERICAN SECTOR” and lacked two of the four languages that constituted the political territory that Check - point Charlie once symbolized. Terada’s re-inscription of the Canada-US border as a sign of danger in 2005 opened up conflicting narratives and signaled that the once-cozy relationship between Canada and the US had been cooling. Terada’s sign seemed to unearth unresolved issues in Canada-US relations: although it was a bald declarative statement, the
sign simultaneously became a representational dilemma. In the aftermath of local censorship in Windsor, Terada’s statement echoed as a series of interrogative variations in a larger Canadian context: Have you left the American Sector? is it possible to do so? and what is an American Sector in an escalating climate of security and remote control?
