For the
Love of
Inquiry

In this multidisciplinary course, students confronted the ways new technologies were changing border controls and the regulation of migration. These technologies included automated facial recognition, the use of biometric markers, the monitoring of digital presence, and other emerging surveillance systems. Alongside increasingly harsh border controls, in which artists came under greater scrutiny and faced growing restrictions, an emerging body of artists responded to the border through activism, performances, installations, and collaborations in the digital realm. The course examined these developments in relation to contemporary conditions such as COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, financial crises, and restrictions affecting students and migrants. The class provided students with an opportunity to collectively process and reflect on the realities they were living through.

The course culminated in students developing their own multimedia final projects, in which they responded as artists and investigators to the concept of digitized borders. Students were expected not only to engage critically with the themes and topics explored throughout the course, but also to design, build, and deploy creative responses.

The course was guided by several central questions: What was the impact of emerging digital borderscapes on the lives, work, and practices of artists? What hurdles did artists face when attempting to transgress national borderscapes? How could artists and investigators respond to the changing nature of the nation-state border? These questions connected the themes explored throughout the course and framed students’ engagement with the material.

Taught at the Design and Technology M.F.A department of The New School, Parsons School of Design (Fall Semester 2020).