Stateless space conjures images of Martian land grabs and unclaimed oceanic outposts. However, a more home-grown version has been evolving along modern nation-state borders. Every troop deployment, immigration policy advance or triple-layer fence construction re-partitions border space into new, buffered zones of potential statelessness. These zones are a dimensional expression of the inability of governments to truly control their cartographically defined territory. It is one of the great paradoxes of the satellite era—current technological capabilities allow a kind of omnipresence in all state space, but their on-the-ground enforcement disallows citizens from actually accessing these zones. Several examples along the U.S./Mexico border illustrate the rise of these new zones of statelessness and how they pose the potential to undermine environmental and ethical codes.

Published in LA+ TYRANNY (2016)

@ Institute for Wishful Thinking (2012)

Supported by the Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship from Harvard Design School.