Technology of Borders and Migration Management

This is an approximately 11 x 38 ft. installation titled, "Woven Chronicle," by artist Reena Saini Kallat (India, b. 1973), 2011–16, from the exhibition: “When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art.” The artist uses “circuit boards, speakers, electrical wires, and fittings” to represent, “‘the global flows and movements of travelers, migrants, and labor.’” The artist uses electrical wiring to both demonstrate transnational flows via increasing globalization, but also to reflect on how states use this same wiring to militarize their borders, inhibiting the flows of migration. “Wire is an evocative and contradictory material: it operates as both a conduit of electricity, used to connect people across vast distances, and as a weaponized obstacle, such as the fences used to erect borders and encircle refugee camps” (Stanford University Cantor Arts Center, 2021).  Courtesy the artist and Nature Morte, New Delhi. Installation view, Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016–17. 

This piece is evocative for my own work on temporal borders as it shows both the increasing flows of migration and state violence of migration management. As the world becomes more connected via technological advancement, states can use this same technology to militarize physical borders and create new ones such as temporal borders, using time in ways that inhibit the flows of migration and limit migrants’ ability to obtain legal status.