Abstract
Talk of a ‘migration crisis’ calls forth three related spatial renderings of the Mediterranean Sea. Their social production involves a particular politics of visualization. First, the Mediterranean is but one leg of a longer migration corridor, yet as such substantiates a geo-racial border zone. Second, scenes of rescue at sea have functioned as border spectacles, naturalizing migration politics. Third, expanding surveillance infrastructure has undermined a firewall between border patrolling and search-and-rescue, thereby helping to create and sustain an ethical landscape of response-ability to routinized emergency. Visualizing and disseminating this landscape has, for the moment, created a political space between wanted and unwanted mobilities.
Notes
1. This opening scene was also exhibited by the artists as an independent work, entitled THE INVADER AND THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD. It can be viewed at http://www.nicolasprovost.com/films/838/ (accessed 30 November 2015).