The project brings together online audiences in the United States with site-specific audiences in Berlin, at the site of the original Berlin Wall.

One section of the exhibition documents the Strategic Border Initiative in the United States and compares it to the Berlin Wall, while the second section presents more metaphorical questions that have to do with identity.

The metaphor deals with the idea of split hemispheres. It takes the geographical idea of place and relates it to the idea of "split personality," for example emotion vs. reason. From this, individual identity can be used to discuss a larger collective identity.

"Your Imaginary Country" is part of an ongoing body of work and projects generated and produced over the last six years by Scott Townsend, working in collaboration with others as hosts. The projects in general engage issues of cultural identity at a time when the global economy is changing our perception of ourselves. The work attempts to develop simple critical ideas in the audience about specific issues such as immigration (the US border fence compared to the Berlin Wall), traditional ideas of language and culture (Tokyo Japan, 2007), etc.

In "Your Imaginary Country", different communities in the US have to deal with the contradictions between the symbol of the Berlin Wall ("communist repression") against the building of a similar wall in the US (the protection of US "identity").

The primary interaction is in combining multiple audiences; one at a distance and one site-specific. This particular project does not use text answers between audience members (which Scott Townsend has used in the past). Rather, the ongoing shifts in answering questions about inclusion or exclusion of immigrants is visualised between the audiences in the US and Germany. Actual discussion takes place in the gallery space and through ongoing blogging by critical writers working with Wooloo.

In the gallery space, projected interactive pieces combine text, images and animations, and are connected to the web. The gallery audience and the online audience can submit answers that change the imagery in the piece.

The project developed a lot of dialogue, both online (through email discussions) and also in the Berlin site. Even though the project was overtly critical of the US government, other kinds of pressures exist in Central Europe that are similar to the issues that were being discussed as a "United States problem".

The primary partners included Martin Rosengaard and Sixten Kai Nielsen. Working with additional staff, they planned programming, logistics, overall sponsorship and media contacts for the festival that the project formed part of.

This project has been funded by a grant from North Carolina State University in the US.

Other sponsors have included (for Wooloo): Deutsche Bahn (DB), Skoda, DSB, Taeker, Danish Embassy, Berlin.

A follow-on project will happen in early 2009 sponsored by London College of Communication.

The nature of these projects is in cross-cultural issues, therefore collaborators that I work with have these issues as major concerns. This project and others like it would simply not exist without an interest in the subject matter, since there is no way this work can exist in a commercial gallery or context.