Human Rights Project and Human Rights Program Present

Hostile Environment(s), a Talk by Lorenzo Pezzani

Many of you will have seen the extraordinary visual account of “how Europe outsources suffering as migrants drown” published in the New York Times at the end of last year, produced by the Forensic Architecture/Oceanography research teams.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/26/opinion/europe-migrant-crisis-mediterranean-libya.html

We are very lucky to have one of the authors, Lorenzo Pezzani, a leading expert and activist on trans-Mediterranean migration, and a pioneer in human rights counterforensics, visiting Bard today. His talk this afternoon is part of the Lexicon of Migration lecture series, and focuses on the instrumentalization or weaponization of the environment as a means of controlling migration. 

In May 2012, the then UK Home Secretary Theresa May announced the introduction of new legislation aiming to “create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration. . . . Work is under way,” she further explained, “to deny illegal immigrants access to work, housing and services, even bank accounts.”

This process of making (mainly urban) space unlivable for some bears an eerie resemblance with the ways in which other, more “natural” environments have been turned into spaces of hostility for migrants. From the arid lands of the Sonoran and Sahara Desert to the rugged mountain passes in the Alps or between Iran and Turkey, or the oceans encircling Australia, the United States, Europe, and the Arabian Peninsula, migrants have in the last few years been pushed into more and more hazardous terrains, in the hope that the risk of injury and death they will face might deter them from attempting the crossing. In all these examples the environment, understood as a political-economic effect rather than a simple “natural” background to human action, stops being simply a site of power, and becomes one of its mode of operations.

In this lecture, drawing from the work on cross-Mediterranean migration that he's carried out in the context of the Forensic Oceanography project, Pezzani will explore this form of border control, asking how this analysis might help us to rethink conventional understandings of both environment and displacement and to connect struggles around migration, borders, and environmental justice in new, unexpected ways.

Lorenzo Pezzani is an architect and researcher, and teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2011, he has been working on Forensic Oceanography, a collaborative project with Charles Heller and others that critically investigates the militarized border regime in the Mediterranean Sea, and has cofounded the WatchTheMed platform. Together with NGOs, scientists, journalists, and activist groups, Forensic Oceanography has produced maps, videos, installations, and human rights reports that attempt to document and challenge the ongoing death of migrants at sea. This work has been used as evidence in court cases, published in the media and academic journals, and exhibited and screened internationally in cultural institutions and biennials.
 

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For more information, call 845-758-7127, e-mail [email protected],
or visit https://hrp.bard.edu/event/hostile-environments-a-talk-with-lorenzo-pezzani-of-forensic-architecture/.

Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 202

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