Somatechnics, Institute for LGBT Studies

This interdisciplinary roundtable explores the intimate interconnections between the contemporary politics of uncertainty, risk, danger in the insecurity state, and material manifestations of reterritorializing, rebordering and prolific performances of nationhood, together with the amplification of surveillance and identification technologies. In many cases, critical infrastructure, state and federal buildings, digital systems, and specifically border facilities, among many others, are considered as material manifestations of securitization discourses. The alleged security imperatives of the day have contributed to an intensification of differential access and mobility - often vis-a-vis technology. Public and state buildings are increasingly festooned with CCTV cameras, border facilities augmented with enhanced surveillance capacities and increased space for incarceration and detention, and airports, have undergone significant “siege minded” redesign in a post-9/11 epoch. At the same time, incarceration is cleverly concealed in "iBorder" like fashion, behind art installations, executive lounges, and secondary inspection areas that look more like five star hotel lobbies. The roundtable examines these retrerritorializing performances of nationhood, and the symbolic role of architecture and the built environment as discourses and performances of sovereign exceptionalism, nationalism, chauvinism, patriarchy, heroism, (in)vulnerability, and so on.

The authors in this collective discussion engage, disaggregate and unpack the triangulation of security, technology and architecture, across a range of contemporary spaces/places. Reflecting diverse interdiscipli-nary commitments and perspectives, the collective discussion considers security, technology and architecture in urban environments and global/local interfaces, borders, borderlands and ports of entry, and even the sensorium, from soundscapes of the airport to teargas laden environments. From quotidian to high-tech, these interventions tease out the increasing ferocity of architecture and/in its relationship with technology and security.