A third space
In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau, positions the bridge as a destabilizing force, acting directly on the spaces that it connects: what is described is a 'third space' between two stable entities. On meeting, "touching" for the first time, these spaces are changed. For the first time, with this definition of boundaries, each space becomes clearly identified by what it is not; equally, they might now also become what they are not.
Gaps
Time appears to have worked as an additional force on each bridged space: in most cases there's a similarity between them, with in no sense signs of conflict between sides: in areas of heavy traffic and high maintenance in San Marco, the bridges provide a very smooth segue. Only in rare cases, such as on the Ponte Longo here in Giudecca, are there gaps, breaks, cracks where you can see water beneath. In its decay, it reintates the initial power of its 'diabolical force', capable of simultaneously clarifying identity, while opening it to perilous, alien influence.
Beyond utilty
In Venice, bridges are built out of necessity, but do bridges here serve us beyond utility? Above all they enable movement: the motion of traffic still brings action to the boundaries of these now stable-, formerly conflicting places. The bridge is now the site of movement which forces us physically towards one another, tries to constrain our movements to two distinct, opposite flows. The Ponte Dei Pugni, in Dorsodoro, still tells of the mass rucks that would push crowds of fighters from one side of a bridge to another, contesting territory; but where is this conflict now? On crowded bridges in Venice the opposing flows take no quarter regarding people who try to slip into lateral movement. The head-on confrontations make for awkwardness of footing, stuttering rhythms.
Nations and Regions
Thinking of the relationship of human movement to our definition and understanding of space and place, (and in the context of this Biennale) it has been their expression at the scale of Nation that is most obvious. I've lived in several Nations, and have always worked across many. In my experience, they make themselves known most obviously at bureaucratic or administrative levels rather than as expressions of genealogy, rights-to-inheritance or a mystical or spiritual attachment to land. Their boundaries are permeable, given the right permissions, (or techniques - Heath Bunting's 'Border X-ing' 
project, for instance). Within some agglomerations of Nations, such as in the UK, no formal change of permission is required to cross National borders; the flow of people from one to another has suited the aims and intentions of those who determine the shape and scope of these Nations - for example sharing population of workers or consumers.
These flows have also derived from people's desire to own use these spaces as they see fit - to maintain connections to friends or family for example. If this flow is unobstructed, to the point that both places appear equally familiar to those who share them, it is likely that the administrative definitions of each place will become experienced as less important than the lived experience of being in and between these places.
