Border theatre: on the arts of security and resistance

Abstract

This essay addresses the conditions and limits of artistic interventions in the contemporary landscape of border security. It argues that the theatrical rituals of border security — scanning, screening, verifying identity — have become domesticated and all-but-invisible in our daily scopic regimes. At the same time, the essay suggests that surprising, enchanting encounters with the techniques and technologies of security can interrupt border sequences and create invigorated possibilities for public engagement. An ethics of unanticipated worlds is proposed as an alternative to political action as always proximate to observable and visible violence. In a world where rituals of border security increasingly operate precisely by pre-deciding and pre-empting in advance, art that works in the absence of certainty and decidability offers a crucial window through which to evaluate and respond.

‘The dead are coming’: acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders

“…The border has been compared to a political stage as it constitutes a locus for the coercive hand of the state (e.g. Amoore and Hall 2010;Anderson, Sharma, and Wright 2012;Auchter 2012;Rygiel 2014). Its coercive features materialize in the physical constraint or violence that results from the modalities of border enforcement, thus the ways in which borders are controlled or policed.…”

“…The arts literature has highlighted how performance art can draw attention to what would otherwise slip from view, and thereby interrupt routinized registers, sequences or rituals (Amoore and Hall 2010). To Rancière, this effect is political, inasmuch as he sees politics as a disruption of an order in the name of what is not seen by that order (2004).…”

“…Several studies have explicitly focused on arts practices as a tool of mobilization in this area (Amoore and Hall 2010;McNevin 2010;Squire 2014;Hauschild 2016;Stierl 2016), and applied Rancière's writings to migration studies (Nyers 2003;Edkins 2011Edkins , 2015Wilcke and Lambert 2015;Stierl 2016). Previous research has also, albeit perhaps less critically, engaged with the CPB's artwork (Hauschild 2016;Stierl 2016).…”

Data, interface, security: Assembling technologies that govern the future

“…Acting to articulate fire as a risk, the technologies found in the FRS contribute to an emergent set of governing practices found across an array of institutions, from financial tracking (de Goede, 2012) to border and airport security 4 (Amoore and Hall, 2010, Adey, 2009, Salter, 2013. Digital security devices are harnessed within these organisational contexts to manage risks before their unfolding.…”

Art Across Borders: Dislocating Artistic and Curatorial Practices in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region

“…As usual for biennials, and in contrast to art fairs, also the X-Border Art event was predominantly funded through public institutions. Even though the event 9 Both Vukov and Sheller (2013) and Amoore and Hall (2010) refer to the Transborder Immigration Tool that was developed by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre at the University of California, San Diego, to electronically assist illegal crossings of the US-Mexican border as an example for an artwork with direct performative effects. For additional examples of performative border interventions at the US-Mexican border see for instance Walsh (2013: 975-979) and Weber (2012: 487-493).…”