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Project

In/visible constellations. Photography and spaces of imaginations in the Swiss Italian borderscape

National borders in the contemporary world are subject to contradictory visibility. While they are hyper-visible in the debate within politics, the media, and academic research, the mechanisms through which they are enforced and come to ‘act’ are often invisible. Specifically, internal European borders have been highly dematerialized and are often invisible on the ground. Yet, these borders are not disappearing, nor becoming irrelevant. At the same time, the enduring hegemonic representation of borders as lines incorporates the limited perspective of nation-states, which tends to naturalize them and to suggest that they exist only in the sediment of the line. Engaging with the notion of ‘borderscape’, this PhD research confronts the problem of borders in/visibilities by focusing on a specific border, the Swiss Italian’s. The notion of borderscape is an emerging conceptualization from Border Studies that recognizes borders as multiple, mobile, and multi-located ambits. Borderscapes are composed of different official and unofficial representations and imaginations, as well as of different spatial practices. To question the in/visibility of these phenomena, the PhD research combines perspectives and methodologies from Urban Studies, Art History, Photography Theory and Practice within the emerging multidisciplinary field of Border Studies. Through an analysis of contemporary photographic artworks, field research for the making of photographs, and a careful study of a specific territory, the thesis explores how contemporary photography can reveal the in/visible constellations of borderscapes and counter their hegemonic representations, both practically and theoretically. In the Swiss Italian borderscape, the research investigates specific spatial practices of crossings – that of cross-border work and migrations – and places associated with them, mainly from a female perspective. The major contribution of the thesis is to elaborate the potentialities of photography to open up new spaces of imagination in borderscapes through constellations of images and words.

Date:13 Oct 2020 →  24 May 2022
Keywords:border, landscape, photography
Disciplines:History of art, Visual cultures, Photography, Urban and regional design, development and planning not elsewhere classified
Project type:PhD project