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Student: Ramya Swayamprakash
Advisor: Anirban Adhya
Borders are pervasive (McDougall & Valentine, 2004); they ‘fix’ space. An embodiment and attempt at permanence of state power and jurisdiction, the process of marking a border is a continuous one. Indeed borders are constantly “being made” (Houtum & Pijpers, 2007) (Kolosov & Scott, 2013) — a border is not just a physical, static outcome of socio-spatial dynamics but also a dynamic functional process of fixing/making/ defending (by state agencies). On land, political borders manifest themselves through border infrastructure (e.g. check posts, fences etc.). Today, borders continue to structure the landscape around them by creating permissible zones, points of entry etc. Natural frontiers such as rivers have often coalesced into political borders; however making an infrastructural stamping difficult, if not impossible. In my reading, it is the insertion of the border on to the terrain of water that is an interesting moment—spatially—where the infrastructure of a border has (thus far) been absent. Political borders over water create a fluid condition that is difficult to map, man and police. Through this thesis I aim to understand the marking of the US-Canada border along the Detroit River and uncover the spatial implications and imagery rooted in this formation.
With at least 28 islands through its 32 mile course, the Detroit river forms the international border between the US and Canada. All the islands along the Detroit River are owned by an institution; individual; or a commercial enterprise — a practice that has continued ever since the region came under exploratory eyes. Indeed, it seems like the border was decided with respect to ownership of islands.
A central hypothesis of this thesis thus is: private ownership is (and has been) a powerful actor in the shaping of the US Canada Border (as it has shaped the rest of the US and indeed the idea of the US) along the Detroit River.
Thus far, the field of border studies has centered on the actors that make, maintain a border, even impose a border (McDougall & Valentine, 2004). The border as a space and infrastructure of culture and ecology has been under researched (Kim, Border as Urbanism: Redrawing the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, 2012). I contend that through their shaping, borders themselves become infrastructure of culture (and through that ecology). The urban/regional Detroit River is an important case study, it is as the only International heritage river between the US and Canada, in addition to being a non-militarized border condition.
Taking a cue from Jean Baudrillard’s description of architecture as that “in which the space of the thought itself” (Baudrillard, 1999, p. 32), Andrei Piotrwoski asserts that “a piece of architecture is the space of representation” (Piotrowski, 2001, p. 43). Turning the statements on their head, I contend that as a thought/idea first, a political border is a place for architectural intervention; secondly, as a space of state representation/ threshold/boundary, a political border is an infrastructural and architectural enterprise.
Use Your Cell Phone as a Document Camera in Zoom
From Computer
Log in and start your Zoom session with participants
From Phone
To use your cell phone as a makeshift document camera
