ABSTRACT
Within a single landscape, living territories overlap, and any movement involves crossing thresholds, so that living things constantly evolve along, within, and across borders. You could say that the border is their milieu. In turn, every milieu is a border in a certain sense, that is, an interface and a zone of exchange. On the maps familiar to us, however, borders are lines, not spaces. Whether they mark the boundaries of villages or cantons, regions or nations, maps have played an essential role in the establishment and solidification of these initially arbitrary borders, which are then gradually inscribed into reality, each line on a map having an impact on living things, their modes of existence, and their paths. The cartographic tradition’s enthusiasm for borders, their physical establishment, and their visual representation by certain animal and human beings, can perhaps be explained by the need to create frames – a need that varies by society and species – to delimit a protective space, an envelope, even though this space constantly eludes us because we share it with others, and because it depends on others. These fictitious frames around us limit our movement, but they also hinder that of others – other species or other members of our own species.
