First & Fifteenth

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First & Fifteenth
First & Fifteenth
Fifteenth #4: On borders

Fifteenth #4: On borders

Technologies of borders past, present, and future

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Michael Kibedi
Mar 15, 2024
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First & Fifteenth
First & Fifteenth
Fifteenth #4: On borders
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From lantern laws of eighteenth-century New York to AI-powered sentiment analysis, dialect recognition and computer vision — how the logic of borders surveils the racialised Other while seeking to look beneath our skin


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Photo of Ludgate Hill, facing east in the City of London, taken with a long exposure which shows a police watch post in the centre of the road. St. Paul’s cathedral is visible in the distance. White text is overlaid stating “Fifteenth #4: On borders. Available March 15th, 2024 at UXMICHAELCO.SUBSTACK.COM”.
Ring of Steel: Fleet Street (2010) a collaborative project to make visible the “function, nature and effect” of the surveillance apparatus encircling the City of London, by photographer Henrietta Williams and map maker George Gingell

Borders are a technology concerned with constraining where and when people can move.

Our understanding of borders and who they target has been skewed since the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, we perceive borders as a technology directed towards people who originate beyond a nation-state. However, when we examine the histories of bordering, its technologies are more often aimed at restricting the freedom of movement within a nation-state.

So, who were the targets of early bordering technologies? How were they identified and captured in data? How do these histories and logics contribute to the bordering technologies operating today?

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