Performance Border Checkpoint was first realized in 2016 during the Préavis de désordre urbain – International Performance Art Festival in Marseille. Conceived as an action in public space, it used a cylindrical structure several meters in diameter, built from modular site fencing and sheathed on the outside with thick black foil. The floor, covered with soft gym mats, allowed participants to lie down comfortably. The entire structure was set in the middle of one of the main squares in the very center of Marseille. Dozens of passers-by walked past while the action unfolded. The action was intended for a limited number of people and was repeated every 30 minutes over several days during peak hours.

An important point of reference for the performance was the migration crisis then gathering force, as well as the artist’s personal memories of humiliation and fear during border controls when Poland was still part of the Eastern Bloc. The action was propelled by utopian imaginings of an ideal border crossing at which an ideal officer opposes the logic of control with rituals of communality; offers care in place of inspection, responds to fear with gestures of friendship, and soothes and embraces travelers frightened and exhausted by their journey. It allows them to pause, recover, and experience calm.

The checkpoint, symbolized here by a provisional structure placed in a public location, becomes at the same time a symbolic boundary between what is private and public, formalized and relational.

During each session, the artist and several volunteers, together with a comparable number of participants, were inside the structure. Waiting at the center of the “checkpoint”, the volunteers and the artist—without words, using only body language and learned gestures—invited the audience to repeat a sequence of actions: approach – embrace – kneel/sit – lie down together on the mats. Following the volunteers’ cues, participants lay down gradually and trustfully; their breathing slowed and synchronized; some slipped into light lethargy or a brief doze. After several minutes, each person rose at their own pace and left the structure; after a short break the next session began.