BORDERLESS Sculpture

This is the actual sculpture erected on the US/Mexico border wall for cryptograffiti's stunt highlighting the borderless and unconfiscatable properties of Bitcoin.

The sculpture is composed of 12 painted, solid cedar seed words which bolt to a solid aluminum hub and spoke.

The winner may also choose to receive the stand displaying the sculpture at this year's The Bitcoin Conference.

Buyer to pay shipping (~ $400 in the US without stand)

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The story of the BORDERLESS Sculpture:

In short, the BORDERLESS sculpture was created to highlight the borderless and unconfiscatable properties of Bitcoin.

I moved to Mexico during the 2014/15 bear market and at the time remittances were widely touted as bitcoin’s killer app. While there, I spoke with locals about their experiences with sending and receiving money. In addition to learning how predatorily expensive the money transfer companies like Western Union and MoneyGram were, I also learned that these companies were extremely dangerous. Multiple people recounted stories of being robbed while attempting to receive money at their physical locations.

Later in my trip, I traveled by bus to Guatemala and heard even worse incidents from those attempting to cross the border with their savings. Those willing to speak with me either had a personal experience or knew of someone who was robbed (or worse) while crossing. Oftentimes it wasn’t just by coyotes helping them cross, but by border guards.

In 2019, I visited the Venezuelan border for a Bitcoin mural project aiding refugees and heard similar accounts of property theft from those trying to cross into Colombia. I watched first-hand, people in their most vulnerable moments, carrying children and what few possessions they could to try to better their lives for them and their families.

And so after that trip, I knew I wanted to create some sort of piece that spoke to bitcoin’s ability to provide a safer alternative for crossing with one’s savings. Eventually I came to the idea of a sculpture that would attach to the border wall.

Finding a location was the first step. Partly due to proximity and partly due to aesthetics, I thought the US/Mexico border wall would make the most sense for the project. In 2020, I went on the first scouting trip to the Tijuana border. A local artist served as my guide but ultimately the region wasn’t a fit due to the double and even triple walls separating people from the border. This would have meant the sculpture wouldn’t be interactive. While I didn’t have a specific concept for the sculpture figured out yet, I knew I wanted it to be something that people from both sides of the wall would experience.

During that trip I was able to measure parts of the wall and see that it is composed of 6” square tube steel uprights spaced 4” apart. There’s also corner bar supporting the uprights that runs horizontally along the lower section and flat bar running along the top to thwart climbers. I saw how the uprights are mounted corner to corner and that said corners have a pretty large radius. All these variables cemented in my mind that I needed to somehow bring pieces of the wall back to my studio so I would have exact measurements and tolerances when building the sculpture.

Upon my return from Tijuana, I looked online to figure out where the steel was being sourced. While there wasn’t any public information, one close up photo of the wall showed the markings ATLAS TUBE on the uprights. Eventually I uncovered that ATLAS was in fact the metal fabricator contracted to build the wall.

I wanted to approach them about getting some pieces but wasn’t sure what to say. I figured if the company agreed to take on this contract it was likely a tell regarding their political affiliations. Thus, I called pretending to be part of a California Young Republicans group and said I wanted to make commemorative Trump coins out of pieces of the wall.

In my mind, this was a risky scenario with it being government property, but what occurred is something that has happened time and time again when doing random, public bitcoin stunts. Ultimately, people tend to not care. They’re going about their day and thinking about their own problems. The guy on the phone just said “Oh cool, Trump coins. Sure, yeah we have some tubes at a scrapyard in Calexico.”

So off to Calexico I went for the scrap metal, but also hoping the Mexicali region could work for the sculpture. And while the location was perfect from a cinematography perspective, the area was crawling with border patrol. In a few hours I was pulled over three times because my window tint was concern I was hiding migrants. Each time they looked in the back of my SUV, and when they saw the newly-acquired wall pieces I thought I was going to be detained. But I simply said "it’s for art," and they let me go.

I returned from that trip with test pieces for the sculpture but still needed a good location. After more research it became apparent there were only so many areas that would work as much of the border is in desolate, mountainous regions. This is what ultimately led me to the Juarez/El Paso border. Juarez, while not the safest of places, did have people living in close proximity to the border.

Thanks to Twitter, I was able to connect with some bitcoiners in El Paso who provided helpful local knowledge. During the scouting trip last November, I was able to find a good location for the sculpture and connect with people on both sides of the border to let them know my plans. Border patrol was present but not as omnipresent as in Calexico.

By this time I had refined the concept for the sculpture. The idea was to demonstrate how discreetly and efficiently Bitcoin could be moved across borders. My initial design was a large, steampunk-esque B which would rotate between the border wall. This concept went through numerous permutations to allow for ease of transport. It was during this brainstorming that I realized a large B didn’t speak as directly to the message I wanted to convey as seed words. After all, it’s just 12 words that are needed to safely move one’s savings. I refined the design to focus solely on the words and chose ones from the BIP 39 list which I felt best spoke to the endeavor of those braving a border crossing.

To create the sculpture, I water jet cut the words from solid cedar as well as an aluminum hub/spoke upon which they would rotate. The design allowed for the words to be removed from the hub/spoke for flexibility in transport.

I painted the words to match the rusted patina of the border’s steel with the reverse side painted orange. The circumference of the sculpture was sized to fit between a particular section of the wall in Juarez and by sheer luck, that circumference just barely fits in my studio.

On February 23rd, the night before the stunt, we flew into El Paso and discussed the game plan over dinner. I was able to find a driver, Juan, who would take us over the border and into Juarez in the morning. We would then unpack and assemble the sculpture outside of Ricardo’s house, a man I met during the scouting trip. Then we’d mount the sculpture and get as much footage as possible before border patrol arrived.

The morning of the stunt, we arrived at the location and unpacked the sculpture to find 6 of 12 the seed words had broken. In addition, some super glue brought for emergencies had opened and covered many of the bolts that secured the words to the hub and spoke. And to make matters worse, there was construction happening on the US side of the border which meant workers would potentially be within camera shot.

Our driver Juan had wire he kept in his car for random emergencies and we used that along with wood glue to fix the broken words. He was also able to find more bolts locally while we assembled the sculpture. By late afternoon we were ready to erect the sculpture. We secured the mounts that hold the axle for the hub/spoke via ratchet straps. But despite all the prep work, the axle was too long and wouldn’t fit on the mounts. Because the axle is solid steel, we didn’t have the tools to cut it. I flagged over one of the construction workers from the US side and 10 minutes later he returned with the axle cut to size.

With all the repairs made, It was finally go time. We noticed that the activity from the construction served as a needed distraction for border patrol as they weren’t monitoring what we were doing on the Juarez side. However, several locals were and we enlisted them to help us move the sculpture into place. It was a huge sigh of relief once it was mounted and spinning. Years of planning culminated in this moment.

The sculpture was being spun by locals on both sides of the wall and 12 words were rotating seamlessly between the two countries. I was able to speak to numerous people about what the sculpture represented. And how all it took was memorizing or discreetly storing 12 words to achieve cross border monetary freedom.

And it was great to hear that 10 years after my initial orange pilling trip to Mexico, people were now much more familiar with bitcoin.

Of all the stunts I’ve done in my career as a bitcoin artist, this has been my favorite. Thank you for reading.

- cryptograffiti