A text by Thomas Gorton on Dazed
“As the second Glass wearer in two months is assaulted, will we ever learn to accept Google Glass?”
“The wearable computer Google Glass has been thrust into the spotlight once more after another attack on a user in San Francisco. Last month, the tech writer Sarah Slocum had her Glass snatched in a bar in the early hours of a Saturday morning. This time around, the victim was a 20-year-old reporter called Kyle Russell.”
Martin De Wulf
Migrations Map
Interactive map
Visit the project
The map allows you to see for every country X in the world either the top ten providing countries of lifetime migrants to X or the top ten receiving countries of lifetime migrants from X. On top of that, when you let your mouse hover over a country, you can see the total population, the GDP per capita, the HIV and Tuberculosis prevalences and the death rate of children under five.
Martin De Wulf, born in 1978, have been programming this map to learn and have fun with HTML5 technologies. Besides of learning, my only goal is to create a website that can make people think.
Data and Dragons: Cloud Farming, 2014 custom designed printed circuit boards, ethernet patch cables, 80/20 aluminum installation: 31 x 87 x 35 in / 78.7 x 221 x 88.9 cm, Photo by John Berens for bitforms gallery, New York City, USA
placesiveneverbeen.com
Cloud Farming questions the sacred nature of technology by re-contextualizing system hierarchy as a portrait of data. It manifests the cloud, social networks, data, leaks and what forms social capital into a single object. Ultimately its a creative experiment about contemporary power structures as a type of group consciousness, becoming a 3-dimensional map of post-Wikileaks information culture.
b.1981, Portland, OR
Lives and works in Innsbruck, Austria
Addie Wagenknecht is an American artist based in Austria whose work explores the tension between expression and technology. Blending conceptually-driven painting, sculpture, and installation with the ethos of hacker culture, Wagenknecht constructs spaces between art object and lived experience. Here, the darker side of systems that constitute lived reality emerge, revealing alternative yet parallel realities. In the context of post-Snowden information culture, Wagenknecht’s work contemplates power, networked consciousness, and the incessant beauty of everyday life despite the anxiety of being surveilled.
A member of Free Art & Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, Wagenknecht was the recipient of a 2014 Warhol Foundation Grant, which she used to found Deep Lab, a collaborative group of researchers, artists, writers, engineers, and cultural producers interested in privacy, surveillance, code, art, social hacking, and anonymity. As an active leader in the open source hardware movement, she also co-founded NORTD Labs, an international research and development collaborative with Stefan Hechenberger, which produces open source projects that have been used and built by millions worldwide. Wagenknecht’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Phillips, New York; LEAP, Berlin; Haus der elektronischen Künste (HeK), Basel; MU, Eindhoven; the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Gaîté Lyrique, Paris; Beit Ha’ir Museum, Tel Aviv; and many festivals such a GLI.TC/H and the Nooderlicht Photography Festival. Her work has been featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Art in America, Vanity Fair, BUST, Vice, and The Economist. Past residencies have included Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York; Culture Lab at Newcastle University, UK; Hyperwerk Institute for PostIndustrial Design, Switzerland; and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.
Presently chair of the MIT Open Hardware Summit, Wagenknecht holds a Masters from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon. Wagenknecht’s first solo exhibition in the United States, Shellshock, opened November 2014 at bitforms gallery in New York. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at MU, Eindhoven and HeK, Basel. bitforms
Readmission pertains to the removal of aliens who do not or no longer have the right to enter or live in the territory of a country. Countries of destination, of transit and of origin may cooperate on readmission by drafting an agreement.
Historically, politically and legally, readmission is not a new topic in international relations. What, however, is new and unprecedented are the ways in which the cooperation on readmission has been configured and practiced over the last two decades or so, while gaining tremendous momentum in bilateral and multilateral talks.
Bilateral agreements may be formalised, as is often the case, through the conclusion of standard readmission agreements based on reciprocal obligations. However, making an inventory of bilateral standard readmission agreements would never suffice to capture the various cooperative mechanisms that have been designed to facilitate the expulsion of irregular aliens.
Actually, under certain circumstances, two states may agree to conclude a bilateral agreement or arrangement without necessarily formalising their cooperation on readmission. They may decide to graft readmission onto a broader framework of bilateral cooperation (e.g., police cooperation agreements including a clause on readmission, administrative arrangements, and partnership agreements) or to deal with it through other channels (e.g., by using exchanges of letters and memoranda of understanding). Among others, the rationale for such non-standard agreements is to respond flexibly to various contingencies over time. Many EU Member States, as well as other countries around the world, have concluded bilateral non-standard agreements linked to readmission in order to address re-documentation and the delivery of travel documents or laissez-passers to remove unauthorised aliens.
This dual approach explains why it is important to talk about agreements linked to readmission, for it encompasses agreements that can be standard and non-standard. Since its inception in 2006, an inventory of the bilateral agreements linked to readmission has been made based on dual approach. Among others, it is aimed at unveiling the scope of the expanding EU readmission system, across all continents.
The rationale for the inventory is not only informative. It is also aimed at showing that a whole readmission system exists linking today more than 125 countries of destination, transit, and origin, whether these are poor or rich, large or small, conflict-ridden or not, democratically organized or authoritarian. This is a powerfully inclusive system.
Jean-Pierre Cassarino is a political scientist doing research at the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC, Tunisia). Previously, he held a professorship at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (RSCAS, EUI). His research interests focus on patterns of international cooperation as applied to the “management” of international migration and asylum.
Publications: https://irmcmaghreb.academia.edu/JeanPierreCassarino
Email: cassarinojp AT gmail.com
Aeroplanes and Deportation
Conference organized by Martina Tazzioli (postdoc Lames LabexMed) in the frame of the LAMES’ seminar Migrations et crises. Discussants: Cédric Parizot (IREMAM, CNRS/AMU), Martina Tazzioli (LAMES/LabexMed, AMU)
10 May 2016, 2.00-5.00 pm, Room PAF (MMSH)
Image : Jean Pierre Cassarino, Réseau des accords bilatéraux liés à la réadmission, 2013
April 13, 2016, Faculté d’architecture La Cambre,
April 14, 2016, Université Libre de Bruxelles,
April 15, 2016, World Costums Organization
Espace Architecture Flagey, Bruxelles
[metaslider id=6469]
15.30 – Introduction
Andrea Rea (Université Libre de Bruxelles/GERME) and Cédric Parizot (IREMAM, CNRS/ Aix Marseille Université)
15.45-16.30 – Keynote lecture
Didier Bigo (King’s College, London),
Reconceptualising boundaries differently from Westphalian model ? The practices of border, police and military controls and the trends of delocalisation and digitisation
17.00-17.45 – Arts and science at the border
Jean Cristofol (Ecole supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence),
Art-science and exploratory processes
Nicola Mai (Kingston University, London),
Assembling ‘Samira’ and ‘Travel’: understanding humanitarian biographical borders through experimental ethnofictional filmmaking.
17.45-18.30 – Discussion
18.45 – Opening of the exhibition
Performance by Vincent Berhault (Compagnie Les Singuliers), Chronicle at borders
9.30-11.00 – Extent and limits of datamining
Chair: Andrea Rea (Université libre de Bruxelles/GERME)
Julien Jeandesboz (REPI/Université libre de Bruxelles/REPI),
Calculation devices: EUROSUR and European border policing
Martina Tazzioli (LabexMed, LAMES, CNRS/Aix Marseille Université),
Track, sort and archive: Eurosur, Frontex and the temporality of migration maps
Sara Casella Colombeau (LabexMed, LAMES, CNRS/Aix Marseille Université),
Building a genealogy of data gathering and production at the border – An analysis of the professional transformation of the French border police since the 1990s
11.30-12.30 – Discussion
Discutant : Federica Infantino (Oxford University/Université Libre de Bruxelles/GERME)
14.00-15.30 From coding to visualisation
Chair: Thomas Cantens (Organisation Mondiale des Douanes)
Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary (PACTE, CNRS/Université de Grenoble), Gabriel Popescu (Indiana University, Southbend),
Border as Code : Algorithmizing Access
Jean Pierre Cassarino (Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain, Tunis),
Making Migration Control Visible and Intelligible
Cédric Parizot (IREMAM, CNRS/AMU), Mathieu Coulon (LAMES, CNRS/AMU), Guillaume Stagnaro (ESAAix), Antoine Vion (LEST, CNRS/AMU),
Visualising Border networks: Codes, Nodes, and Mapping
16h00-17h00 – Discussion
Discutant : Christophe Wasinski (Université Libre de Bruxelles/REPI)
9.00 – Introduction
Sigfríður Gunnlaugsdóttir (President of the ethic committee (WCO)
9.15-11.00 – Data control : use and ethics
Chair: Patricia Revesz (Organisation Mondiale des Douanes)
William L. Allen et Bastian Vollmer (Oxford University),
What Makes Secure Borders? Data, Transparency, and the Representation of Projection
Marcellin Djeuwo (Douanes du Cameroun),
The mathematisation of the fight against corruption and bad practices in Cameroon Customs : the practice and reality
Felipe Mendes Moraes (Douanes du Brésil),
API: an example of control at borders
Renaud Chatelus (Université de Liège – European Studies Unit),
The decision-making chain for risk management applied to border controls: some lessons learnt from a European simulation of strategic goods control
11.15-12.15 – Discussion
Discutant: Julien Jeandesboz (Université Libre de Bruxelles/REPI)
14.00-15.00 – Technical and Ethicla Perspectives in Border Control
Chair: Antoine Vion (LEST, CNRS/AMU)
Thomas Cantens (WCO Research Unit, Ecole d’Economie de l’Université d’Auvergne),
Mathematization of the border
Mariya Polner (WCO Compliance Sub-Directorate),
Technologies at the border: risks and opportunities
Michel Terestchenko (Université de Reims, IEP Aix-en-Provence),
Ethics and controls
16.00-17.00 – Discussion
Discussant : Xavier Pascual (Douane française)
17.00-18.00 – Concluding Round Table
Patricia Revesz (Organisation Mondiale des Douanes), Federica Infantino (Oxford University/Université Libre de Bruxelles/GERME), Anne Laure Amilhat-Szary (PACTE, CNRS/Université de Grenoble)
Andrea Rea (ULB), Thomas Cantens (OMD, antiAtlas), Patricia Revesz (OMD), Cédric Parizot (IREMAM, CNRS/Aix Marseille Université, antiAtlas), Anne Laure Amilhat-Szary (PACTE, CNRS/Universités de Grenoble, antiAtlas), Jean Cristofol (Ecole supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, antiAtlas), Federica Infantino (ULB, antiAtlas), Julien Jeandesboz (ULB), Antoine Vion (LEST, CNRS/Aix Marseille Université)
Anne Laure Amilhat-Szary (PACTE, CNRS/Universités de Grenoble, antiAtlas), Didier Bigo (King’s College), Thomas Cantens (Organisation mondiale des douanes/ antiAtlas), Jean Cristofol (École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, antiAtlas), Federica Infantino (ULB, antiAtlas), Dirk Jacobs (ULB), Julien Jeandesboz (ULB), Christian Olsson (ULB), Cédric Parizot (IREMAM, Aix Marseille), Andrea Rea (ULB), Patricia Revesz (OMD), Antoine Vion (LEST, Université Aix Marseille)
Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, l’Organisation Mondiale des Douanes, l’antiAtlas des frontières, l’Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (CNRS/Aix Marseille Université), le projet LabexMed (Aix Marseille université, Fondation A*midex), le Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du travail (CNRS/Aix Marseille Université), PACTE (CNRS/Universités de Grenoble), Kareron et l’Ecole supérieure d’Art d’Aix en Provence.
Digital, bilingual and in free access, the antiAtlas Journal opens an exploratory editorial space dedicated to a radical transdisciplinary approach to contemporary borders. As an extension of the antiAtlas of Borders project relying on a collaboration between researchers and artists, it experiments new methods of editing and of modelization of research. The editorial directors are Cédric Parizot, Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary and Jean Cristofol. Its content is available online (desktop, tablets and mobiles) and in PDF format.
Published online on 13 April 2016, the first issue, Arts-Sciences Explorations at the Border, brings together articles by Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, Jean Cristofol, Anna Guilló, Nicola Mai, Sarah Mekdjian and Marie Moreau, and Cédric Parizot and Douglas Edric Stanley. The second issue, Fictions at Frontiers (2017), will provide an account of research and reflections put forward by the antiAtlas of Borders’ collective.
Content for later thematic issues will be obtained via calls for papers: the first of these, for antiAtlas Journal n°03, will be published online on 1 June 2016.
Conceptualized and designed by Thierry Fournier and created with Papascript, the editorial and graphic layout for the Journal takes advantage of opportunities offered by digital publication for extending the experience of reading research articles. Its design of articles in wide “sheets” allows readers to access from a variety of levels: the text itself, and the network and landscape that the text creates through its iconography.
By opening up multiple proximities and circulations between text and image, it enables transversal trajectories and varying levels of perception that a linear organisation does not permit, though a linear pdf version will also be available. Very large images will extend beyond the screen: exclusive circulation within an image becomes one form of lecture, similarly to the way we move within a text.
Editorial Management: Cédric Parizot, Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary and Jean Cristofol
Artistic Direction and Design: Thierry Fournier
Development and Design: Papascript (Alexandre Dechosal & Maxime Foisseau)
Editorial Secretary: Sabine Partouche
Editorial Committee: Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary, Thomas Cantens, Jean Cristofol, Klaus-Gerd Giesen, Anna Guilló, Federica Infantino, Joana Moll, Cédric Parizot, Antoine Vion
Publishers: Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (UMR 7310, CNRS/IEP/Aix Marseille Université), École supérieure d’art d’Aix en Provence, Laboratoire PACTE (UMR 5194 CNRS/Université de Grenoble Alpes)
Financial sponsors: Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (UMR7310, Aix Marseille Université/CNRS), Institut méditerranéen de recherches avancées (Aix Marseille Université), Réseau Labex+, Ecole supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence & Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, laboratoire PACTE (UMR 5194 CNRS/Université de Grenoble Alpes)
Digital Publication Policy: Immediate and free publication
Periodicity: 1 issue per year
Established : 2016
ISSN: 2495-7100
Contact: Sabine Partouche partouche AT mmsh.univ-aix.fr
Artistic curators: Isabelle Arvers and Nathalie Lévy
Scientific curators: Andrea Rea and Cédric Parizot
Coding and decoding the borders exhibits the work of artists and researchers who question the datafication and mathematization of the border. Over the past twenty years many actors (researchers, journalists, NGO workers and activists, elected politicians, employees of national administrations and of international organisations, and so on) have observed, documented, studied and sometimes even condemned the technological escalation at borders. Above the militarization of borders, the deployment of ever more sophisticated technologies (biometry, robots, fences and walls, integrated surveillance systems, data mining, big data, etc.) at state borders have been added to the traditional practices of control of movement of populations, goods, capital and information. The study of this technological escalation generally tends to separate the analysis according to the object of control: people, goods, capital. From a perspective intertwining art, research and expertise, the public is invited to look at the circulation of knowledge and techniques between these objects, at the functioning and dysfunctionning of the mechanisms of control as well as their circumvention by a multitude of actors.
The escalation of border control on land, at sea, in the air and on internet in Europe and the rest of the world has radically transformed the nature of borders and how they operate. In order to adapt to and to follow the acceleration of movement of people, goods and information, control systems are relying on increasingly sophisticated digital technologies (biometrics, robots, integrated surveillance systems, data mining, etc.). Some analysts have seen in these trends the symptoms of the de-materialization of contemporary borders. Yet, all these control technologies still retain a strong materiality. They often rely on dense and heavy networks of physical infrastructures. While these networks can be sometimes hidden, like submarine cables (Submarine cable map, Markus Krisetya et al., 2016), they can also be staged such as walls, fences, and checkpoints (Cartographie des Murs, Stéphane Rosière et Sébastien Piantoni, 2016) in order to demonstrate state action and sovereignty. Both designed to manage human body and to be displayed, these artifacts contribute to the development of new esthetics of control (Body and Border, CoRS, 2016). Finally, border control technologies are all the more material as they instantiate or “materialize” hierarchies between people as well as the passage from one space to another (Immigration Game, Antoine Kik, 2016).
Antoine Kik, Immigration game, 2016
Stéphane Rosière et Sébastien Piantoni, Planisphère des barrières frontalières, 2016
The automation of controls is accompanied by both the growing input of data and the “mathematization” of border procedures and border crossings. “Mathematization” is taken here to mean the progressive representation of borders in an increasingly abstract space, structured by quantitative methods (whether in economics, sociology, etc.), by autonomous information based on its own paradigms (logistics and the need for rapid and lower-cost border crossings) and by a specific form of language (technology as a corpus of knowledge on the techniques and tools of surveillance of persons and objects). Some people regard the automation and autonomization of border surveillance technologies as more reliable than human controls, others, on the contrary, express concern about this trend. They point to the risk of endangering the rights and freedoms of the mobile populations or states concerned. The artworks gathered in this part of the exhibition problematize this general trend. Banoptikon (Personal Cinema Collective, 2010-2013) reminds us of the datafication of the body and the new forms taken by control. SimBorder (Pierre Depaz, 2016) and eu4you (Larbits Sisters, 2015) highlight the centrality that algorithms have progressively taken in the control of people movements and access, while ADM8 (Rybn, 2016) shows their significance in the management of financial operations and flows.
Pierre Depaz, SimBorder, 2016
LarbitsSisters, eu4you, depuis 2015
Collectif Personal Cinema, Banoptikon, 2010-2013
RYBN, ADM8, 2016
New technologies of information and communication have not only transformed the functioning of borders they have also changed borders’ visibility. They have introduced new apparatus through which we access and represent the world. Digital maps and GPS system have radically changed our perspective, the ways we project ourselves into space and thus the modalities by which we perceive and imagine borders. Moreover, data mining has not merely increased our calculation capacities, it has also invented a new world. While statistics had created society, and poll had produced public opinion, data mining has created digital traces, through which movements of people, goods, funds and information can be traced, monitored or displayed. Finally, by providing hightech mechanisms for the channeling, the facilitation or the filtering movements, these technologies help reorganize differently the space practices of different groups of populations within and around border zones. Drawing on photos (Calais 1, Michel Couturier, 2015), static and dynamic maps (The Migratory Red Mount, Nicolas Lambert, 2015; One World, Bill Rankin, 2015; Refugee’s trajectories, Martin Grandjean, 2015; 407 camps, Mahaut Lavoine, 2015; Parallel, Lawrence Bird, 2012), the artworks and research presented in this part of the exhibition problematize these very regimes of visibility. They also intend to render visible what is usually made invisible.
Lawrence Bird, Parallel, depuis 2012
Michel Couturier, Calais 1, 2015
Nicolas Lambert, The migratory red mound, 2015
Mahaut Lavoine, 407 camps, 2015
Martin Grandjean, Refugee’s trajectories, 2015
Bill Rankin, One World II, 2015
Most people build their knowledge on migrants’ lives and experiences through the press, reports and documentaries. While these media play a determinant role in informing and developing public awareness, the reality they construct and display is highly shaped by the narratives, standardized scripts and practices, as well as the regimes of visibility in which they are embedded. Our exhibition presents five critical documentary dispositives that aim to reflect on the very conditions by which contemporary and mainstream documentary practices gives us access and shape our representation of migrants lives and experiences. Nicola Mai’s ethnofiction Travel (2016) shows how migrants assemble their bodies and perform their subjectivity according to standardized humanitarian scripts of victimhood, vulnerability and gender/sex that act as ‘biographical borders’ between deportation and access to social support, legal documentation and work. Keina Espineira’s Colour of the Sea (2015) reflects on how performing a film in the threshold stage within the journey of subsaharian migrants contributes to produce and activate a specific border experience. Through a series of photos Giovanni Ambrosio (Please do not show my face, 2013) and a video Antoine D’Agata (Odysseia, 2011-2013) problema
Antoine d’Agata, Odysseia, 2011-2013
Giovanni Ambrosio, Please do not show my face, depuis 2013 (projet évolutif)
Isabelle Arvers, Heroic Makers vs Heroic Land, 2016
Keina Espiñeira, The Colour of the Sea. A Filmic Border Experience in Ceuta, 2015
Nicola Mai, Travel, 2016
Border control technologies are often considered to be omnipotent, omniscient et omnipresent. Both their promoters and opponents are fascinated by their power. Yet, they overlook the fact that it is not possible to dissociate surveillance techniques, however successful and automated they may be, from the political, social and economic conditions in which they are first designed then put into effect. Deployed and associated with systems of pre-existing checks and with specific institutional and political stakeholders, they reproduce the contradictions and lack of foresight of the organizations and stakeholders that deploy them. Moreover, in transforming and modifying the organizational environment in which they are deployed and in modifying the reality they are intended to control, they create new challenges. Lastly, they are often re-appropriated not only by the actors who implement them but also by those seeking to elude border surveillance. Border Bumping (Julian Oliver, 2012) exemplify the disruptive power of cellular telecommunications infrastructure that often challenge the integrity of national borders. Virtual Watchers (Joana Moll, Marius Pé and Ramin Soleymani 2016) highlights both the dysfunctionning and the unforeseen re-appropriations of a panoptic system of surveillance by American citizens along the border with Mexico. Cartographies of Fear #2 (Anne Zeitz et Carolina Sanchez Boe, 2016) questions how by taking over technologies of communication, migrants can affect their relationship to space. Finally, Borderland Biashara & Mobile Technology (Emerging Futures Lab, 2015) highlights and maps the way the reappropriation of mobile phone technologies contribute to sustain an informal economic ecosystem in the borderlands of East African communities.
Emerging Futures Lab (EFL), Borderland Biashara & Mobile Technology, état des recherches en 2015
Anne Zeitz et Carolina Sanchez Boe, Cartographies of Fear #2, 2016
Joana Moll et Cédric Parizot, The Virtual Watchers, 2016
Julian Oliver, Border Bumping, 2012
Faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, l’Organisation Mondiale des Douanes, l’antiAtlas des frontières, l’Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman (CNRS/Aix Marseille Université), le projet LabexMed (Aix Marseille université, Fondation Amidex), le Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du travail (CNRS/Aix Marseille Université), PACTE (CNRS/Universités de Grenoble), Kareron et l’Ecole supérieure d’Art d’Aix en Provence.
Anne Zeitz & Carolina Sanchez Boe
Cartographies of Fear #2
Installation, 2016
Migrants’ access to new technologies plays an important role in their border crossings and their trajectories. Cartographies of fear #2 presents the experience of a Syrian man in Paris. The videos show visible and invisible places and borders within which he has lived happy moments with his wife, as well as the places that he discovered as an asylum seeker and where he feels vulnerable.
Carolina Sanchez Boe has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Her research focuses on international migration, migration control and containment.
Anne Zeitz has a PhD in Aesthetics, Sciences and Technologies of Arts from the University Paris 8. Her research focuses on the observation concepts and operative images, as well as theories of surveillance, “sousveillance” and the “algorithmic governmentality” in art, literature and film.
Michel Couturier
Calais 1
Photography
This artwork is part of a larger project on European ports (Calais, Dover, Catania …). The artist focuses on the infrastructures and apparatuses of control and the regulation of flows of merchandises and people: barriers, checkpoints, gates. This work uses different kinds of media: photos, drawings and video.
Michel Couturier questions the cities and their suburbs since 2001, often related to mythology and its survivals in the modern landscape. His work, which is expressed through photography, video and drawing explores the oddities produced by engineers and examines our relationship with the public space. His recent work addresses transit areas and control places as emblematic places of our living space.
Larbits Sisters (Bénédicte et Laure-Anne Jacobs)
eu4you
Interactive installation, 2016
Visit the project
Eu4you starts with the migration crisis that is rattling Europe and has brought President Juncker to plead for a quota system to distribute the refugees between countries. With an equal chance of freedom, equality and prosperity, and taking into account different variables, the eu4you algorithm performs an equation that reconstitutes the visitor’s computational DNA. It rules on the visitor’s destiny: the promise of a golden future on European soil, or not.
Under the name Larbits Sisters, Bénédicte and Laure-Anne Jacobs form a duo. An important part of their work focuses on the exploration of digital technologies. Emerging issues around the Internet such as privacy, digital identity, 2.0 practices form the starting point of their artistic approach.
CoRS (Codesign Research Studio)
Body and borders
Installation, 2016
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Our research questions the purpose and consequences of existing, new and planned border constructions in Europe by investigating their physical manifestation and context. We use architectural tools and methods, including on-site visits, drawings and models, and collect hard and soft data to understand and document the border constructions. But more importantly, we want to study the constructions in relation to the people attempting to get past them and the way in which the constructions relate to the human body.
Codesign Research Studio is a subsidiary of the architecture studio Codesign. CORS works at the intersection between theory and practice, they question the orle and responsibility of architects and explore issues that are rarely highlighted
Nicolas Lambert
The migratory red mound
Cartography, 2015
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In 25 years, more than 35 000 migrants died trying to reach the European Union. Drowned into the sea near Lampedusa, suffocated in a truck in Austria, starved to death in the Sahara desert or hit by a train in the Channel Tunnel, these tragedies continue day after day. Formerly hidden or ignored, these figures are now regularly in the news. In September 2015, the whole of Europe was seriously upset with the picture of the Kurdish child Kurdi Aylan who died on a Turkish beach.
The maps 1 to 4 tell the story of this geography of deaths and implicate the responsibility of Europe in these dramas. From 1995 to 1999, Southern Spain (Strait of Gibraltar and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla) appears as the preferred point of entry to the European Union. Gradually “secured” (SIVE in 2002, heightening the walls of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005), immigration flows moved to the south in direction to the Canary Islands and to Senegal. To stem these undesired mobilities of humans in direction to Europe, Frontex set up in 2006 control operations far from the borders of the European Union. From 2010, following the “Arab Spring” and much more dramatically with the geopolitical instabilities caused by the wars in Libya and Syria, the huge majority of the dramas are refocusing in the Mediterranean area. Finally, progressively Europe moves or strengthens its border controls, making the trip to Europe becomes more and more dangerous for migrants.
The migratory red mound (map 5) is a global and metaphorical vision of this tragedy. This map draws the European border, not as a line, but as a battlefield. On this map in 3 dimensions, a new territory is taking shape. The height of the mound illustrates the scale of the hecatomb. But, before becoming a map, the “red mound” (“la butte rouge” in French) is over all a song written by Gaston Montéhus (1872-1952). This anti-war song refers to the Bapaume mound which was one of the bloodiest places of the First World War. Revolutionary song also, the red mound is also identified as a reference of the Paris Commune events in 1871. Actually, the migratory red mound is therefore part of a long story of pacifism: the refusal of the First World War once, and the rejection of the invisible war waged against migrants by the European union today.
Methodology: The potential is a spatial interpolation method developed in the 1940s by the physicist John Q. Stewart (1942), by analogy to the gravity model. This method aims to estimate unknown values of non-observed points from known values given by measure points. Cartographically speaking, they are often used to get a continuous surface from a set of discrete points. In thematic mapping, this method allows to simplify and highlight relevant spatial structures. For the maps shown here, the calculations were carried out with the R package SpatialPosition. STEWART J.Q. (1942) “Measure of the impact of a population at a distance”, Sociometry , 5 (1 ) : 63-71 .
Nicolas Lambert is a cartographer, member of the interdisciplinary network for the European spatial planning (CNRS). Involved in the European research program ESPON, his works mainly deal with the graphic representation of spatial information, for which he is developing a critical and radical dimension. He’s also member of the network Migreurop and of the French committee for cartography.
Martin Grandjean
Refugee’s trajectories
2015
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By relying on an unusual method of visualisation, this map underscores the role that traditional cartographic representations play in the way we apprehend refugee trajectories. Drawing on data provided by the United Nations Refugee Agency, the author made the thickness of the edges proportional to the number of displaced persons between two points. Hence, he shows that while Europe is the point of convergence of many migrant routes, they actually represent a small minority of the world’s refugees. Most displaced people move to neighbouring countries as part of south–south migrations.
Martin Grandjean is a researcher in contemporary history at the University of Lausanne. His research focuses on network analysis of large corpus of archives. Spokesperson of Humanistica, the French association of digital humanities, he also has projects in the field of data visualization and Open Data. We find his questions related to the development of historical data, statistical visualization and data-journalism on his blog www.martingrandjean.ch
Isabelle Arvers
Heroic Makers vs Heroic Land
Vidéos Machinimas, 2016
These interviews are excerpted from a work-in-progress. It’s a machinima documentary that I’m making from a game engine, photos taken in the Calais jungle and interviews with the residents from February 6-20, 2016. Notwithstanding, France’s Pas-de-Calais prefecture issued an expulsion order regarding the jungle’s south section that expired on February 23. The entire camp has been nicknamed the “jungle”, as this land was originally a hunting field, and the lack of basic support from the local authorities has transformed people into animals…
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The question I ask myself, what I want to understand, is how to live in the jungle, how to restore its humanity, how to create spaces for living and sharing together. How to do the work of a government that shuns it, that refuses to see the urgency of the situation, that focuses instead on “reducing” the number of immigrants in Calais—without ever taking into account the dignity of those in transit, who seek not asylum but to cross the Channel to the UK as soon as possible…
In a little less than a year together, and with the help of numerous French and especially British NGOs, the refugees of the jungle have built what has become a city-world, populated by places of worship, shops, services, restaurants, schools, galleries, cultural spaces…
These everyday heroes are not only able to meet most community needs, they introduce a fledgling political model, based on decisions made from the representative of each community present, which are heard by NGOs, with all due respect to the needs, expectations and voices of the residents.
The jungle’s biggest irony is the mayor of Calais’ “big project” to rebrand her city by creating a 275 million euro amusement park called Heroic Land—a theme park inspired by the world of video games, manga and heroic fantasy… with total contempt for the true heroes, those who find solutions to the oh-so-complex problems of migration and transit zones…
For this reason I chose the medium of video games to translate my interviews of these jungle residents and give them another dimension. The excerpts presented here refer to building the Chemin des Dunes school. Zimako Jones, the project’s instigator and an asylum seeker from Nigeria, was assisted by NGOs such as Solidarité Laïque, Ateliers Sans Frontières, volunteer groups and “brothers”, as he calls them. One of these brothers is Marko, a Kurdish man who has been in the jungle for more than 11 weeks (and prefers to remain anonymous). He is helping Zimako finalize the construction of what he calls a forum, a place for meeting, exchange and learning for children, as well as for adults.
They talk about building, following a vision, never giving up, staying on site, supporting families, children, mutual aid…
Isabelle Arvers est auteur, critique et commissaire d’exposition indépendante. Son champ d’investigation est l’immatériel, au travers de la relation entre l’Art, les Jeux Vidéo, Internet et les nouvelles formes d’images liées au réseau et à l’imagerie numérique.
Marko, from the Calais jungle to Isabelle Arvers’s machinima:
Marko, de la jungle de Calais au machinima d’Isabelle Arvers:
Stéphane Rosière et Sébastien Piantoni
Wall’s Cartography
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, barriers and walls have multiplied along borders. In 2016, they line a distance of some 20 000 km (8% of the world’s borders). New kinds of apparatus have replaced former frontlines (Cyprus, Korea, Western Sahara). They often perform different functions: regulating the movements of and excluding certain kinds of populations, preventing terrorism, highlighting state sovereignty and materialising borders. Yet these constructions are never isolated. They are part of integrated, high-tech surveillance systems that are not always visible.
Stéphane Rosière is Professor and at the head of the Master degree diploma of Geopolitics in the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (URCA), he’s also head of the Research laboratory Habiter (EA.2076) and Editor-in-chief of the online journal L’Espace Politique.
Sébastien Piantoni is Studies Engineer since 2009 within the team Habiter (EA 2076) from the University of Reims.
Joana Moll & Cedric Parizot
The Virtual Watchers
Interactive installation, 2016
Virtual Watchers is an on-going research project at the intersection of art, research and technology that questions the dynamics of crowdsourcing at contemporary State borders. It focuses on the exchanges that occurred within a Facebook group that will be called here the RedServants, in order to protect there anonymity. This group gathered American citizens that volunteered to monitor US-Mexico border through an online platform that displayed live screenings of CCTV cameras. The declared aim of this operation was to bring American citizens to participate in reducing border crime and block the entrance of illegal immigration to the US. This artwork offers an interactive window that allows the public to dive into the conversations, jokes, and questionings of the RedServants. By doing so, it highlights to what extent the emotional investment and exchanges of these people work as an essential mechanism in the construction and legitimization of a post-panoptic system. Second, it underscores the dyfunctionning of this system of surveillance that fail to provide an efficient tool for monitoring border trespassing.
Joana Moll is an artist and researcher based in Barcelona. Her work critically explores the way post-capitalist narratives affect the alphabetization of machines, humans and ecosystems. Her main research topics include communication technologies and CO2 emissions, virtual civil surveillance and language. She has presented her work in several museums, festivals, universities and publications around the world. Furthermore, she is a member of the transdisciplinary research project Antiatlas des Frontières and co-founder of The Institute for the Advancement of Popular Automatisms. She is a visiting lecturer at Vic School of Art and a lecturer at VIT Lab in Vic (Barcelona). Her full resume is available at http://www.janavirgin.com.
Cédric Parizot is a researcher in anthropology at the Institute of Research and Studies of the Arab and Muslim Worlds, (CNRS/Aix Marseille University). His research focus on mobility and bordering mechanisms in the Israeli-Palestinian spaces. Since 2011, he is the coordinator of the antiAtlas of Borders He sees the integration of artistic practices and digital technologies into its ethnographic research as a way to reappraise critically his own practices of modelization of knowledge.
Technical Development: Ramin Soleymani
Freelancing software developer and media artist. Worked in computer science research for a while, before starting to dive into open education and the hacking culture of Berlin. Is convinced that the ivory tower of science will crush if you just drill long enough at the very same spot with your little finger.
Emerging Futures Lab (EFL)
Borderland Biashara
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Borderland Biashara is an ongoing project to understand and map the informal economic ecosystem in the borderlands of the East African Community. Biashara means commerce or business in Swahili. This ethnographic research explores the role of mobile phone in the biashara at the Kenya-Uganda border. International borders often create ‘unnatural’ complications to everyday activities such as informal trade . These complications may take the form of restrictions on mobility, customs checkpoints, currency exchange, etc. Mobile phones play a vital role in overcoming these barriers to biashara, and the East African region is globally unusual due to the presence of ubiquitous mobile money transfer platforms, and the dominance of the prepaid (pay-as-you-go) subscription model. This photo-log captures some the stories from observing cross border transactions and communications.
Emerging Futures Lab (EFL) is an interdisciplinary research driven concept design and innovation consulting practice operating primarily in the emerging consumer markets of sub Saharan Africa. With roots in human centered design, business strategy and marketing, as well as engineering and technology, EFL offers holistic roadmaps to maximize opportunities in informal and rural markets. Clients include governments, global consumer brands, social enterprises, and multi donor funded regional trade and integration bodies. This exhibit was curated by Rinku Gajera, a human centered design planner who facilitates socially, environmentally & economically balanced design interventions through participatory methods, and Michael Kimani, research associate.
Bill Rankin
One World II
Cartographie, 2015
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At the height of World War II, the architect-turned-cartographer Richard Edes Harrison published his famous “One World, One War” map in Fortune magazine, which used a polar projection to show the United States in close proximity to the threats from Germany and Japan. Compared to the isolationist message of the Mercator, it made engagement with the war seem like a geographic imperative.
My map updates Harrison’s basic idea for the present day. Instead of showing territorial states engaged in a global war, my version uses shipping routes and railways to show the intermodal donut of global capitalism – the frenetic circulation across the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the thick rope threading through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca, and the offshoots to South America, Australasia, and Africa. By using a different projection with a different orientation, I also decenter the United States and transform a world of seven separate continents into a single borderless network.
Bill Rankin is a historian and cartographer at Yale University. His mapping activity reimagines familiar geographies as complex landscapes of statistics, law, and history; his maps have appeared in publications and exhibitions throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. His recently published book, After the Map, is a history of the mapping sciences in the twentieth century.
RYBN
ADM8
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ADM8 is a trading robot conceived to invest and speculate on financial markets. Based on artificial intelligence algorithm, the program can launch purchasing and selling orders completely autonomously. Its decision-making and prediction system allows him to seek, identify and anticipate trends in the financial chaotic oscillations. Commissioned on 31 August 2011, the program relies on a n operative budget of 10,000USD and will continue to operate until bankruptcy.
With the support of DICREAM / CNC, the ZKM Karlsruhe (Institut fur Bildmedien / GAM) and the Gaite Lyrique / TAQ, Paris.
RBYN is a multidisciplinary art collective established in 2000. The collective is based in Paris and specialises in the production of installations, performances and interfaces referring to codified systems of artistic representation (painting, architecture, counter-culture) as well as to human and physical phenomena (geopolitics, socio-economics, sensory perception, cognitive systems). RYBN originates from the Open Source community and is interested in counter models and in ways to reveal ‘what hides behind’ the opacity of systems.
