Category: Documents-en

Mariya Polner – Border Control Technologies: General Trends & Patterns of Development

Mariya Polner – WCO, Brussels

The protection of sovereignty has always been the major task of the state since its inception, along with another important function of differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’. Thus, borders serve not only as gateways to a particular territory, but also as a manifestation of the state sovereignty. At the same time, in a globalised world where interconnectedness and integration are key dynamics influencing economic growth and social development, policymakers are increasingly realizing the need for accelerated border management regulatory reform to reduce unnecessary barriers and burdens on trade. The dilemma of balancing security (and to a certain extent, state sovereignty) and trade facilitation pushed both states and international organizations to seek for different solutions, enshrined in a whole body of newly created policies and standards.

This presentation will touch upon a small part of the overall border management ‘machinery’: border control technologies. Along with the technological progress, border agencies have been reinventing themselves, as well as the way they were operating due to the new tools used in daily operations. Therefore, tracking the development of border technologies provides an interesting insight on the functioning of the state and its policies.

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Robert Ireland – New perspectives on the ‘customs supply chain security paradigm’

Robert Ireland – WCO, Brussels

This presentation is a brief history of the emergence of the Customs Supply Chain Security Paradigm, which at its heart was the customs contribution to counter-terrorism following 9/11. The “new perspectives” in the title are some concluding thoughts on where we are now. In essence, the Customs Supply Chain Security Paradigm is fading as a prioritized customs policy issue, even for the United States. Following the 9/11 attacks, the paradigm emerged consisting of new national customs policies and World Customs Organization (WCO) standards intended to communicate that international cargo ships would be deterred from being used as a conduit for the delivery of terrorists or terrorist attacks. This presentation traces the paradigm’s emergence and its upward trajectory which began with the launch of the two key US Customs programmes (C-TPAT and CSI), continued with the adoption of the WCO SAFE Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade, and reached a climax with the US 100% container scanning law. It will discuss the major policy themes pushed by the US Government, namely advance cargo information submission requirements, customs risk management, non-intrusive cargo scanning equipment, and security-oriented Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) programmes. It will then describe where we are now, namely a downward trajectory with the de facto abandonment of 100% scanning and the US budget crisis which foretells fewer resources for the paradigm.

Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande, Khaled Soliman, Al Nassir – On the bride’s side

Antonio Augugliaro, Gabriele Del Grande, Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry
On the bride’s side
Documentaire
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A Palestinian poet and an Italian journalist meet five Palestinians and Syrians in Milan who entered Europe via the Italian island of Lampedusa after fleeing the war in Syria.

They decide to help them complete their journey to Sweden – and hopefully avoid getting themselves arrested as traffickers – by faking a wedding. With a Palestinian friend dressed up as the bride and a dozen or so Italian and Syrian friends as wedding guests, they cross halfway over Europe on a four-day journey of three thousand kilometres.

This emotionally charged journey not only brings out the stories and hopes and dreams of the five Palestinians and Syrians and their rather special traffickers, but also reveals an unknown side of Europe – a transnational, supportive and irreverent Europe that ridicules the laws and restrictions of the Fortress in a kind of masquerade which is no other than the direct filming of something that really took place on the road from Milan to Stockholm from the 14th to the 18th of November 2013.

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Read the article and interview of the authors by Marco Mancuso on Digicult

Guardian – The refugee challenge: can you break into Fortress Europe?

Le Guardian
The refugee challenge: can you break into Fortress Europe?
Serious game

As EU governments have made it harder to seek refuge in Europe, the flow of refugees fleeing the world’s most desperate conflicts is increasing. We invite you to make the choices real refugees have to make and find out what it’s really like to look for safety in Fortress Europe.

Your name is Karima. You are a 28-year-old Sunni woman from Aleppo, and you have two children, a girl aged eight, and a 10-year-old boy. Your husband was killed in a mortar attack three months ago. The air strikes have continued – a recent bomb, you hear, killed 87 children – and you now feel you must try to leave Syria.

Many of your friends and family have already fled, most to neighbouring countries where they are in refugee camps; few have travelled into Europe. Only 55,000 Syrian refugees – 2.4 per cent of the total number of people who have fled Syria – have claimed asylum in the EU.

You have some money you could use for your journey – you consider your options.

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Geography of Hate: Geotagged Hateful Tweets in the United States

Dr. Monica Stephens
The Geography of Hate
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The Geography of Hate is part of a larger project by Dr. Monica Stephens of Humboldt State University (HSU) identifying the geographic origins of online hate speech.

The data behind this map is based on every geocoded tweet in the United States from June 2012 – April 2013 containing one of the ‘hate words’.

Not a bug splat

#NotABugSplat
Not a bug splat
Installation
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A giant art installation targets predator drone operators. The project is a collaboration of artists who made use of the French artist JR’s ‘Inside Out’ movement.

In military slang, Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, since viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.

To challenge this insensitivity as well as raise awareness of civilian casualties, an artist collective installed a massive portrait facing up in the heavily bombed Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan, where drone attacks regularly occur. Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face.

Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello – Recuerdos : Snow Globes

Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello
Recuerdos : Snow Globes
Snow globes, 2000 –
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California artists Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello have created a series of snow globes that reimagine the fence between Mexico and the United States.

Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello created these recuerdos, or souvenirs, to document their travels along the border. They show both the dark and whimsical sides of life en la frontera, or the border.

Forensis, exhibition in Berlin

An art-science exhibition in Berlin
2014, Mar 15, Sat – 2014, May 05, Mon

How do mortal remains, DNA samples, and satellite images become forensic evidence? What role do imaging techniques and methods of representation play in the investigation of crimes or political acts of violence? How are objects made to speak?

Forensis seeks to invert the direction of the forensic gaze and designate the emergence of new aesthetic-political practices by which individuals and independent organisations use new technologies aesthetic practices, and architectural methodologies to bear upon a range of issues from political struggle to violent conflict and climate change.

Toutes les informations sur le site de la HKW

Forensic Architecture and SITU Research, Video-to-space analysis : Bil’In, Image from the 3D virtual model reconstruction of the scene at the moment of the shooting of Bassem Abu Rahma, © Forensic Architecture and Situ Studio

Nathalie Loubeyre – A contre-courant

Nathalie Loubeyre
A contre-courant
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Since the mid-1990s, more than 20,000 migrants died in the Mediterranean in their attempt to reach Europe. In July 2012, a Euro-African activist coalition called Boats 4 People charters a boat for a solidarity action in order to monitor the border and denounce those responsible for this situation.

When preparing this project, the need to film this action was evident for all members of Boats 4 People. The coalition contacted Nathalie Loubeyre, director, and Joel Labat, cameraman, who participated in all stages of the Mediterranean crossing. This videographic media is of particular importance for Boats 4 People Besides the desire to share an extraordinary action taken by activists from Africa and Europe, the film aims to raise awareness, mobilize public opinion and continue the struggle for the rights of boat-people.

Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev – Newstweek

Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev
Newstweek
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Newstweek is a device for manipulating news read by other people on wireless hotspots. Built into a small and innocuous wall plug, the Newstweek device appears part of the local infrastructure, allowing writers to remotely edit news read on wireless devices without the awareness of their users.

A new network art project by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev at the boundaries between surveillance and data flows.

Hélène Crouzillat & Laetitia Tura – Les Messagers

Hélène Crouzillat et Laetitia Tura
Les messagers
Documentairy
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Migrants die every day, in various places, without the possibility of keeping tracks of it. They disappear in the border. Where are the bodys ?

Les Messagers (The Messengers) are these firsts witnesses, they name the death, they get organised to find a name, a body or build a grave. Holders of the disapeared persons’ remembrance, they fight against the disparition of the human being.

a documentary produced by Marie-Odile Gazin/The Kingdom, in association with Périphérie.

Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot – Cyclone Kingkrab & Piper Sigma

Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot
Cyclone Kingkrab & Piper Sigma
Live stream + Micro fictions

We were looking for places where global warming is considered as an opportunity of development when we were struck by an article in Le Figaro describing Kirkenes in the future as the new Singapore !

We decided to go to Kirkenes, north of Norway, at the Russian border along the Barents Sea. This region is a hot spot: with the melt of ice cap there is a new shipping passage to Asia. Kirkenes with a deep see harbor will became a geostrategic point as Singapore. But the difference is that Kirkenes is also full of resources (oil, gas, fish, ore, wood). It’s Also a geopolitical point, the border to Russia is also the border of the Shenghen Space.

We displayed a permanent video station pointing the city and and the harbor. During our stay we wrote a series of 11 texts inspired by the economic and geostrategic issues of the Barents Region copied on the pattern of Facebook event. At the same time Deep Water Horizon was dumping tons of crude in the Pacific ocean. At the end texts became 11 audio stories talking about money, oil and global warming.

“Series of audio tales whose tragic beauty with science fiction scenarios trickles away like a string of Facebook events in a sonic composition against a backdrop of an abyssal groundwater, enigmatic culminations of jingles and samples where the engine of an icebreaker collide with the hysterical laughter of gulls, a few seconds of a radiophonic hit single, the sonar of a whale, sounds of helicopters, the synthetic Victoria… And the beautiful stoic voice of Motto, unravelling the absurd.” Orevo

Since they met, ten years ago, Magali and Cedric’s joint work bears the dual hallmark of experimentation and performance. Their pieces bring together various media and associate elements from opposite ranges, with a taste for connections between Sci-Fi and documentary forms, high-tech engineering and fantasy tales, heavyweight materials and fleeting sensations. Starting with installations and plastic objects, their work soon included experimental actions and more immaterial artistic gestures. Videos, sound art, music, olfactive research, virtual works bordering the digital arts, have formed, this past 3 years, a cycle of works dealing with climate change, economic, politic and geo-strategic issues, urban development and food management.

Streaming : mms://88.84.190.77/cam11

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