Issue03　Traveling the Borderland

Traveling the Borderland - In an Era of Division and Disconnection

The pervasive term of 2025 is "division," keenly felt across the globe—from the U.S. election and international conflicts like Ukraine and Israel, to a growing sense of fracture even in Japan. Against this backdrop, and as the art and media world ponders its role, we believe our personal travel magazine must directly confront this division.

If we are to contribute, we must use the fundamental actions of travel—to walk, see, listen, and feel—to experience this phenomenon with our entire bodies. We ask: How does division arise? What form does it take? Can we truly intervene?
The title of polaris Issue 03 is “Traveling the Borderland.” We journeyed to remote, peripheral regions around the world—places situated at the borders between nations. There, we found division everywhere, notably affecting people pushed to the margins. These divides were both physical (territories, borders) and invisible (language, culture, values). We met individuals who actively confront and fight against these fractures.

We offer their stories. While we didn't discover any clear solutions, these borderlands provided scenes and signs that subtly, yet surely, shifted our fundamental perspectives on the nature of division and disconnection.

Chapter

Chapter01:Borderlands and Travel

1-1 Walking the Margins of America/The U.S.A., Border Region

1-2 La Gomera: What the Mist Remembers/La Gomera, Canary Islands, Spain

Chapter02:Borderlands and Vanishing

2-1 The Dry Years: What Was Really Lost in the Drought/Putaendo, Chile

2-2 Sylvan Recollections/Taimagura, Mt. Hayachine, Iwate, Japan

Chapter03:Borderlands and Language

3-1 Threads of Code: The Programming Language Prāsa and the Revival of Telugu/South India

3-2 Searching for the REAL Form/Japan

Chapter04:Borderlands and Solidarity

4-1 Our Co-Blind: Care for the Visually Impared and Social Change in the Northern Philipines/Baguio,Philipines

4-2 SESSiON: What Can Independent Magazines Do in an Age of Fakeness and Disconnection/Kamakura, Japan

Language: Japanese&English
Size: 257mm × 345mm
Page: 136p 
Color:All 4C
Printed in Japan
ISBN 978-4-9912793-2-4