Vilnius continued

Started reading Tomas Venclova’s dreary but informative book about Vilnius. Bursting with fat, delicious facts. He points out that Vilnius has not only always been a border town but that the borders in question have changed. During the golden age of Lithuania in the middle of the 15th century, Lithuania was the largest country in Europe, its eastern border touching the Black Sea. With the western half of the country in German hands, Vilnius sat at the very west of the country. Today it sits at the far east, just 30km from Belarus. The book also has some valuable information about the old walls, that stood for 300 years and that were built in fear of a hostile Tartar invasion that never came. I think the walls don’t offer enough for the Borders project in themselves, and would force me to do something that may well look good but that would suffer from a confused text. I’m now looking at opening up the project visually to incorporate the whole of Old Town, incorporating previous ideas and looking at the city’s history through modern photography. I’m also curiously (and perhaps obviously) drawn to tourism. What is it that people are feeding on intellectually and spiritually when they jog from church to church? There’s a fascinating border here in the grey area between what little (usually biased) information they absorb courtesy of guided tours etc, and the facts about the places they visit as they really are. Not very explained I’m afraid. More to follow. I’m beginning to see the light.