Shapes on the Horizon

Reading the Pumice Raft and Migration through Agentic Ecologies and Australian Border Control

  • Jaxon Waterhouse Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia)
  • Chantelle Mitchell Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22029/oc.2020.1186
Keywords: Deleuze, littoral spaces, geology, detention centers, migration

Abstract

In 2019, reports of a raft of pumice adrift in the Pacific Ocean circulated. We track its movement through surveillance technologies — tools of control that buttress turbulent and shifting contemporary borders. Our consideration of the movement of people across porous borders apprehends migratory discourse and critiques framings of abjectness, fear, and colonial reperformance in an Australian context. Security and surveillance, and the littoral composition of Australian borders figure as means of maintaining and reinforcing fixed, terrestrial constructions of sovereignty. Recent border polices involving stratified spaces of offshore detention become bureaucratic and inhumane extensions of the littoral sphere — convergences of the smooth and stratified, that invert, yet reinforce colonial control and persecution. Framed by Deleuzoguattarian notions and our ongoing research project, Ecological Gyre Theory, we see overlaps, collisions, and parallels between the pumice raft as agentic, ecological force, and legacies of invasion and colonisation, reperformed onto people and landscapes. Considering the agentic power of bodies, we read the traversal of the sea by both raft and asylum seekers towards a critique of Australian history and cultural identity. Our critique endorses both a decolonial and New Materialist approach, exploring ecology and being amidst climate collapse and a rapidly changing world.

Author Biographies

Jaxon Waterhouse, Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia)

Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse are researchers and writers from so-called Australia, working across academic and contemporary arts settings through their research project Ecological Gyre Theory. Together, their work has appeared in e-flux, art+Australia, and Unlikely Journal, with other publication outcomes currently under peer review. They have presented their work at conferences nationally and internationally, most recently through the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for the WRITING&CONCEPTS Series, for the British Animal Studies Network, and Macquarie University. They have recently shown their work at Sawtooth ARI, Launceston (deluge, January – February 2020) and taught their ecotheory and practice focused curriculum ‘Abyss Lessons’ through Bus Projects in 2020.

Chantelle Mitchell, Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia)

Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse are researchers and writers from so-called Australia, working across academic and contemporary arts settings through their research project Ecological Gyre Theory. Together, their work has appeared in e-flux, art+Australia, and Unlikely Journal, with other publication outcomes currently under peer review. They have presented their work at conferences nationally and internationally, most recently through the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for the WRITING&CONCEPTS Series, for the British Animal Studies Network, and Macquarie University. They have recently shown their work at Sawtooth ARI, Launceston (deluge, January – February 2020) and taught their ecotheory and practice focused curriculum ‘Abyss Lessons’ through Bus Projects in 2020.

Issue
No 10 (2020): Metaphors of Migration
Section
_Articles