A boundary is a delineation—politically, physically, spiritually, or emotionally—that defines a threshold or limit. The notion of a boundary in a geopolitical sense is tied to a set of agreed-upon geographic borders that describes in highly specific terms a physical area governed by a particular entity.

When physically encountered a border can at times feel arbitrary but the structures defined by the complex political and legal machinations maintaining the border via laws, treatises, compacts, land theft, military-might, and the concept of citizenry itself are anything but. This matrix of agreements and their upkeep can lead to widely differing ad hoc solutions, as seen with the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, where the tension on both sides of the border has crystalized into major military installations, with each literally prepared for nuclear war. Or the blindingly complex geopolitics circulating around the Gaza–Egypt–Israel barrier. Or the political stakes held in tension by the US–Mexico border.

Existing inside our current lived moment, Twelve Earths falls solidly within the logic of geopolitical boundaries, yet it also casts a wider, panoptic net, imagining speculative borderless conditions. Functionally, 12E’s ring stretches around Earth and passes through 20 countries at 40 discrete border crossings. In the process of circling the globe, it passes through regions, municipalities, cities, neighborhoods, villages, factories, homes, and living rooms, representing a rich diversity of earthly ethnographic possibilities.

On one level, the ring exists as a omniscience eye, unconcerned with the anthropogenic logics governing political boundaries. So, as it traverses regions maintaining strong national identities and borders, it does so skirting through delicate alpine ecosystems. It traverses rivers with spawning fish. It traces a line through unimaginably dense forests with still undiscovered fauna. It makes contact with 3000-year-old termite mounds and vast, hidden-from-view mycelium networks. It wraps through undersea hydrothermal vents and the alien microbiomes they support. A reef system, an owl’s nest, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Worlds within worlds within worlds, unbound and incognizant of borders within anthro-state conventions.