The modern city is a hotchpotch of communities, quarters and villages, a series of streets, houses and buildings. The line that marks the city’s extremities, is the furthest limit of the city. With the city plan as a reference, the city limits can be approached on foot, simultaneously established and recorded. However, it has become impossible to get a bird’s eye view of the city, because urban constructions flows silently into the adjoining municipalities.

  When Hendrik Willem Mesdag painted his Panorama of The Hague in 1896, the world was still clearly arranged: every town could easily be grasped by the individual. This kind of overview has been lost: modern times have fragmented our view. Nowadays a survey requires several standpoints: the Panorama becomes a Borderama, the sum of the views covering the city’s virtual periphery.

  The Borderama arose in 1996 from a commission from Artoteek Den Haag, an art gallery that offers works of art on loan in which the city plan was my frame of reference for eleven photographs of eleven sites. The city’s limits or borderama created a line for interpretation. All the photographs were on loan right after the exhibition, which caused another fragmentation of the survey. The Borderama will be virtually reconstructed again in the eleven living rooms of the lenders throughout the city. By being lent out again and again, the imaginary border, collectively formed, is continuously modified.