Off the Map at LUX Nijmegen

As the crow flies, it’s not even six kilometers from the German border to our comfy seats at LUX, Nijmegen, on March 24th, 2026. From these seats, we crossed many borders this evening and imagined, even for just a short time, how the world would be without borders.

Journalist Jorie Horsthuis kicked off the evening by telling about a conflict Donald Trump claims to have resolved, travelling back to Nagorno-Karabakh, the country that ceased to exist two years ago this autumn. We asked the audience which borders they would like to erase. ‘The border between Limburg and Brabant,’ someone wrote, ‘I would like to be a Brabander too’. Someone else wrote ‘All borders. One world’. And another one wrote: ‘All borders surrounding Kurdistan. For freedom! I want a world without borders. Fuck borders. No borders, just love.’

When you grow up in Nijmegen and learn about maps, you grow up with the feeling that you are very decentral. The view is towards the west, towards the perceived center of the Netherlands, and not so much to the nearby neighbour Germany, which is not even six kilometers away. Borders start living in your brain, but they are human inventions. It was Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who said: ‘Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.’

Someone who knows all about borders and whose homebase is Nijmegen, is Henk van Houtum, professor at Radboud University. In Free the Map, he argues about how we need to shift our worldview and break free from the lines and arrows on maps. Why is migration often depicted as red and aggressive arrows and what message does that convey? Why do we cling to a 16th century projection to look at our world and what are the limitations of state-maps? How are we stuck between lines on maps and in our minds and how do we rid ourselves of these demarcations?

Two and a half years after October 7th, 2023, and countless acts of violence later, we sought to create space between the lines that have been drawn between Palestine and Israel. Musician Jareach Gilula kicked off with a piece based on a 17th century Jewish prayer for peace on her impressive harp and journalist Jorie Horsthuis talked about her recent visit to Israel, where she finds more diversity in unity than here in the Netherlands. The prelude to every war is fear of the ‘other’ and dehumanisation. Jareach Gilula played another captivating piece for us on her harp, based on Psalm 122 and sang to it in Hebrew and in Arabic, inspired by a peace demonstration by people of a lot of different religious backgrounds she attended last spring in Jerusalem and conjuring up the hopes of humans.

Graphic designer Floor Koomen took us to the South China sea, an area where geopolitics is played out by creating islands from atolls and even putting lighthouses on them. And these lighthouses end up on stamps, to further the claim that this sea belongs to China. Geopolitics on the squared centimeter.

Last but certainly not least, there was a quiz by researcher Suzanne Hendriks. From unicorns on passports to annexed lands, the winner took home a prize from Northern Catalunya, where Suzanne was last Summer. A big thanks to the funds that make our Dutch tour possible: Fund for Special Journalistic Projects (Fonds BJP), Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek, BNG Cultuurfonds. And also thanks to the people at LUX and to both photographers: Jerney Hakkenberg and Peter van Esch for making these photographs. Hopefully we will return to Nijmegen for an evening between Wanderlust and Weltschmerz!