The Western official understanding of community differentiates between immunized and de-munized bodies and territories, protecting some and subjugating others. Based on this vision of community, capitalist, imperialist, and patriarchal ideology and technologies deploy a wide range of strategies so as to create borders – real and symbolic – political and ontological.

Today, the importance of borders in people’s lives is more than theoretical. Borders unite and divide; they can be walls, or invisible zones; porous or hermetic; mobile or fixed. Borders allow some people to move through them freely while restricting access to others, or impeaching them to move. Hence, whether they are opening or closing, borders have become an object of public policy as well as an essential resource for private interests; they are a governing and an economic tool. They represent a point of political, social, economic exacerbation, and are interesting sites of artistic investigation.

Through the reading of theoretical texts and the study of artistic practices, we will try to understand what kind of borders exist today and how they help us analyze our relation to the world, and the imagination of other futures.

Attendance, collaboration and engagement in preparations before and discussions during the course. 

Presentations of works and/or texts might be asked as well. 

The first course on October 8 is mandatory. If you cannot attend this course, please write me an email. 

The course is complementary to the course Strategies of Public Interventions. Please register for both courses.