Walls

Hey guys,

Look around you: walls are everywhere. Most of the civilizations we know raised walls and we spend the best part of our life inside them. Houses, schools, offices, factories… places sheltering and imprisoning us, until the day we die, but no, wait… this is untrue, because in many countries burial grounds too are surrounded by walls. It looks like our rotten bodies need to be contained within walls as well. Walls, separating the living and the dead.

 

Tonight, we are about to leave for a trip, so fasten your belt and imagine a huge empire, whose main fact is a wall. A wall built by several dynasties during millennia. A wall as long as twenty-one thousand kilometers. Yes, this is the Great Wall, and we are in China. You could think that wall served to repel invasions, but no, not quite like that... its main purpose wasn't military defence. It was migration control and identitarianism.

 

It's a long flight from China to northern England, and, once landed there, you'll discover another ancient wall, spanning 118 kilometers, from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. Welcome to the Hadrian's Wall, a border of stone built by the Romans to keep intact their empire, mark the limit of civilization and try to stop smugglers and immigrants from the North. On the other side, the so-called barbarians.

 

Berlin is just a couple of hours by plane from London, so seize the time to take a nap, and then you'll wake up in time to rent a bike and pedal along the Berlin Wall Trail. Another city, another wall, this one made of modern concrete and symbolizing the colonialist division of the German territory made by the winners of World War II. A wall made to prevent emigration, this time, and, again, to define identity.

 

Every wall divides the world inside from the world outside. It doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong. It doesn't matter how resistant a wall is. Sooner or later it will crumble and what's inside will meet what's outside. There will be blood, then. A whole river of blood, flowing to nowhere, until the day another wall will be built. We are doomed to constantly repeat the same mistakes, but don't worry... We have beer enough to survive in the fridge. Goodnight, children.

wrr002 36

Chiara M. - Voice, Text, Playlist, Creative Direction
Silvana T. - Voice on Announcements and Jingles
Paolo C. - Production & Technical Direction, Original Background Music
Theme Song: Western Mantra by Cabaret Voltaire, Three Mantras 12" EP - Rough Trade RT038 - 1980