No Man’s Land – Jackie & Anny

We are interested in the existence of no man’s lands and demilitarized zones around the world– manufactured landscapes resulting from historic political oppositions. There is a compelling narrative of irony in these spaces, where man has forcefully inserted himself in nature, but can no longer return due to fear of remnant military weaponry, like landmines, barbed wire, and shrapnel. Because of this, the ecosystems have been given a second chance and species have flourished in these zones.

Reclaimed sanctuaries of these political climates can be seen in Europe (the Green Belt along the Iron Curtain), Southeast Asia (the Lost World along the border of Vietnam and Laos from the Vietnam War), and the most active in East Asia (demilitarized zone between North and South Korea).

—

“a richly forested, unspoiled … strip of land that stretches like a ribbon … across the waist of the Korean peninsula.” [where] the resident species generally remain unmolested by human interlopers because of “a densely planted underground garden of deadly land mines, which the birds and animals somehow use a sixth-sense to avoid.”

– Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History