Scars&borders

Mitra Azar / USA

independent

vimeo.com/mitraazar/collections

Scars&Borders is an ongoing archive of images shot by the artist investigating crises locations at geographical borders from the imaginary yet real perspective metaphorically located at the buffering areas between two confining countries – where technically and symbolically there's no proper jurisdiction of a country's law over another. The political danger of this zone is underlined by their prison-state status and by the strategies of distraction enabled on site via presence of duty frees and/or touristic attractions, both responsible for anesthetizing the subversive strength of those spaces.

Those borders are selected on the basis of their sociopolitical and aesthetics potential in regards to disclosing narratives in the frame of challenging political situations, and studied from the point of view of an aesthetic of crises. Thus, the praxis of the artistic research looks at borders not anymore as frozen scars but rather as virtual lines of flights, optimal for the beginning of a process of deterritorialization from a certain type of bio-political control, for example the one on the notion of human movement. Scars&Borders generates a series of site-specific works with the means of photography, filmmaking and performances at borders' areas around the globe.