Refugees drown in the ocean or in border rivers, they freeze to death crossing borders at night, suffocate in containers or commit suicide in deportation jails. The fortress "Europe" is strengthening its bulwarks more and more. The price that refugees have to pay to gain access into the "fortress" is increasingly rising.

During a one-week period of action, SOCIAL IMPACT researches and documents safe immigration routes along the Austrian-Czech border (using GPS data, video sequences, photography, hand-drawn sketches, protocols ...). The project-team crosses repeatedly the border illegally to attain enough data to make it possible to find and follow the investigated routes. Information material will be additionally provided on the asylum situation in Austria and on incidences of fatal attempts to cross the Schengen border.

The item "routes" on this homepage not only shows the researched migration routes as descriptions with map material and short videos, but also provides important tips on how to act when escaping across the border. These tips and route descriptions can easily be printed out to serve as a convenient guidebook for immigration.

"BORDER RESCUE" is taken as a metaphor for the rapidly growing insulation of the industrialized world regions, resulting in increasingly dangerous immigration attempts and thus leading to a constantly growing number of deaths among illegal immigrants attempting to cross borders. The art project "BORDER RESCUE" addresses the topic of death on the borders, while attempting at the same time to break down barriers through a radically subversive approach, seeking to extend access to the resources of the western world.

Social Impact was founded in 1997. We are partners in realizing sociopolitical artistic interventions in public space. Sites of social friction are the location for the interventions. Art as a means of adressing circumstances that require explanation. For more informations about Social Impact go to www.social-impact.at