Visual Arts Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Volume
46
Issue
3
Journal
Oxford Art Journal
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcad030
Abstract
This article focuses on a body of work by Mosse that includes the multichannel video installation Incoming, shown as a 52:12 minute three-channel video installation with 7.3 surround sound, and the photographic series Heat Maps (2015–2017) (Fig. 1). While Incoming concentrates on migration routes, Heat Maps portrays the architecture of refugee camps.4 I consider how the artist’s use of thermal imaging and his immersive mode of documentary complicates tropes used to represent migration. I reflect on the way Mosse’s artwork intersects with a long-standing interest by practitioners and theorists of film and photography in the idea of the camera as a tool that extends vision, and in this way, how it takes up Jacques Rancière’s claim regarding the political significance of an aesthetic endeavour as its ability to make visible what is not normally recognised.5 I differentiate my approach from discussions that deal with forced migration in terms of the concept of bare life and migration zones as spaces of exception.6 This framework, which borrows from philosopher Giorgio Agamben, tends to establish an opposition between subjects with and without rights, disconnecting migrants from the complex problems that have caused their displacement. Instead, taking a cue from Lilie Chouliaraki and Tijana Stolic, I consider how Mosse’s representation of involuntary migration offers insight into the political failures that have led to migrant precarity.
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