Border Assemblages: Re-collecting Moria
by Yannis Hamilakis, Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Modern Greek Studies
Merging scholarship and activism, this project focuses on the largest migrant-refugee camp in Europe, Moria, located on the island of Lesvos in Greece, in what is effectively a borderline between the Global South and the Global North. Situated within the epistemology and theoretical framework of an archaeology of the present, Border Assemblages: Re-Collecting Moria explores the material construction of confinement, regimentation, and surveillance, and the production of a border spectacle through specific material infrastructures. Also, and perhaps more importantly, the project investigates the reshaping of the camp thanks to the labor, initiative, and inventiveness of migrants themselves: the construction of shelter, the organizing of alternative food provision through a bottom-up regime of affirmative biopolitics, and practices of waiting. Border Assemblages interprets Moria as a phenomenon of the current moment, as a material-social configuration, the careful study of which can help understand global processes of mobility, of bordering, and of transient life.
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This project is an assemblage of sorts – not in the sense of accumulation but rather in the Deleuzian sense of agancement, a gathering together and curating of heterogeneous components that will cohere and co-function within the digital realm. It is also a sensorial assemblage, a gathering that aims at engendering affective connections across various borders, including the border between maker/curator and user. Thus, I think of Border Assemblages as an interactive digital installation, supported by photography, video, and recorded interviews that foreground the materiality and human experiences of Moria.
Supported by the Mellon Foundation
