X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility
X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility is a body of work about the phenomenological effects of vision technologies on the perception of undocumented immigrants. The images used in this series were collected from the United States Border Patrol and border-watching vigilante websites. This project remediates images made by machine vision technologies that are used to patrol international borders into craft processes.
This translation highlights how subtle shifts in medium can evoke a new emotional relationship to this imagery and questions the manner in which the surveillance medium itself serves to de-humanize the subjects of machine images. This shift in medium also reveals how new vision technologies recycle Cartesian modes of viewing land and body and in so doing reinforce a neocolonial worldview.