Think of national borders beyond just lines: this invitation guides Nicoletta Grillo’s journey into the Swiss-Italian border, a journey shaped through the lens of photography theory and practice. Moving between contemporary cross-border work and south-north migrations, this study unveils today’s borderscapes as dynamic constellations of spatial practices and imaginations. The book delves into landscape representations by combining the analysis of contemporary photographic artwork with field research and with the author’s own photographs, displayed in an extensive photo-textual travelogue. Perspectives from critical border studies, research in the arts, and urban studies come together to offer a larger reflection on the re-imagination of borderscapes.
Nicoletta Grillo, Ph.D. (1991), is an artist and researcher. She is an Assistant Professor in Visual Arts at Hasselt University in Belgium.
Acknowledgments List of Figures
1
Stones, Leaves, Waters, and Barbed Wire 1 Plates: Pietre, Foglie, Acque, e Filo Spinato (2017–2019), Nicoletta Grillo
2 Plates Captions
3 Along the Swiss-Italian Border
4 Photographs as Traces of the Invisible
2
Borderscapes 1 Thinking on the Margins
2 Scape as Political Aesthetic
3 Between Representation and Experience
3
From Here, to There, and Back 1 Visible Cartographies and Shifting Lines
2 Bodies Labouring at the Border
3 People on the Move
4
Constellations 1 At the Southernmost Point
2 Henri Lefebvre, Representation, and Space
3 Photographic Re-Imaginations of Lampedusa
5
A Travelogue from the Field 1 Borderscaping: Some Methodological Notes
2 Plates: Travelling Flowers and Other Stories (2019–2021), Nicoletta Grillo
3 Plates Captions
4 Road to the Border
5 Woods
6 Factories
7 Walking at Dawn
8 Train to the North
9 Parking Lots
10 Walking at Night
11 Brothels
Researchers in contemporary art history, artistic research and practice-based research, photography, visual culture, border studies, urban and landscape studies.