Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction | Platform Jurisdiction |
Through a focus on the English Channel I investigated physical border infrastructure and government policy in order to understand how a digital hostile environment functions as part of a larger border apparatus.
Calais is a hotbed for the generation of media relating to migration. Stakeholders project contrasting pictures of life along this border. In June 2021 a TikTok video went viral, showing an overcrowded dinghy full of people speeding across the Channel. The content was similar in appearance to any of the supposedly journalistic reporting in the Channel the year before. The only noticeable difference was that the camera was in the hands of a migrant. Priti Patel sent a letter to social media companies calling on them to remove ‘posts which promote and even glamourise these lethal crossings’ calling them ‘totally unacceptable, the argument being that ‘they encourage others to leave a safe European country and put their and their family’s lives at risk.’
The frequency of the forms which make up the physical security infrastructure at the Port of Calais offers the possibility of interventions which hack these structures in a manner which is scalable through repetition, allowing sensitive data to transverse this border.
In developing this phased approach I aim to suggest a speculative proposal which adapts to the temporality of the conditions along the border and reacts to the choreography of movements across the border.