Contested and Contingent: Digital Borders from Juárez to Guizhou

• Image: Border Field Area, California. Image Source: The Center for Land Use Interpretation [link]. Licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Creative Commons License.

A Global Digital Infrastructure event, with generous support from A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times

with Isadora Bratton-Benfield, PhD Student, Film & Media, UC Berkeley; Hui Wong, PhD Student, Film & Media, UC Berkeley; and Xuewei Luo, Undergraduate Student, Department of Art, UC Berkeley; Martina Wu, Undergraduate Research Apprencie, UC Berkely

With new digital infrastructures, borders are being remade into technical systems of control. As they are materially and socially embedded within the infrastructures of the US-Mexico border, border surveillance technologies reproduce algorithmic violence. The digital border between the US-China reflects growing geopolitical tension and risks creating a fractured internet and deepening global divides. These processes are moving at a feverish pace and in an unknown direction. This research takes seriously the radical potential of mapping and visualization as critical tools. As with any visual form, maps are polysemic: at once denotative and connotative, open to contestation. We invite alternative vantage points and social imaginaries to confront and critique the algorithmic order inscribed at digital borders.

Schedule

3:30–4:30pm: Presentation of US-Mexico digital borders by Isadora Bratton-Benfield; Presentation of US-China digital borders by Hui Wong, Xuewei Luo, and Martina Wu, followed by feedback and q&a

4:30–5:30pm : Food and drinks

Accessibility

BCNM events are free and open to the public. This event will be held in-person, on the UC Berkeley campus. We strive to meet all access and accommodation needs. Please contact info.bcnm [at] berkeley.edu with requests or questions.

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