Intervention: Forensic Oceanography—Tracing Violence Within and Against the Mediterranean Frontier’s Aesthetic Regime

Abstract

In this intervention, Heller and Pezzani introduce the Forensic Oceanography project, which, since 2011, has critically investigated the militarised border regime in the Mediterranean Sea and developed new methods to document violations of migrants’ rights at sea. They argue that the policing of the EU’s maritime frontier generates a particular aesthetic regime—understood as what presents itself to sensory experience. Distinct conditions of (in)visibility and (in)audibility are imposed by states’ restrictive policies but are also shaped, transformed, and contested by multiple other actors, including migrants’ themselves. Through the example of their investigation into the ‘left-to-die boat’ case, they demonstrate that such an understanding is the condition to critically appropriate technologies usually used to police illegalised migrants and exercise a disobedient gaze. Ultimately, Heller and Pezzani show that to contest the violence of borders, one must also challenge the boundaries of what can be seen and heard.