On the Art of Bordering and the Lines of Flight of Border Art. A Critical Inquiry into the Geographies and Aesthetics of Europe's Border

Borders do nothing; people do. This book explores borders as processes rather than objects, shifting the focus from fixed lines to everyday practices of bordering. Grounding in critical border studies, it advances theory and conceptualises the border as a dispositif: a mobile assemblage of visibility, discourse, power, and subjectivation. From this perspective, borders are continuously negotiated, staged, and transgressed. At the centre of the analysis are the aesthetic and experiential dimensions of bordering. Far from being secondary, these dimensions are constitutive of how borders are constructed and made meaningful. It is within this terrain that border art becomes analytically and methodologically relevant. As a confrontational practice, it does not represent borders from the outside but intervenes in their making, exposing their logics and opening to reconfiguration. Through a naturalistic and indisciplinary approach, and a combination of qualitative methods with art-based and visual methodologies, the research focuses on post-1989 Europe. It unfolds into two case studies: an exploration of border art practices across the continent, and a collaborative project (What I mean by Europe) that experiments with border art as a research method. By engaging sensory and aesthetic dimensions, often overlooked in conventional analyses, this work rethinks borders as mobile assemblages, a matrix of visual and discursive formations, shaped through practices that constantly traverse and rework them. And, therefore, altering the assemblage and producing a new Europe is not only possible but precisely how it has worked since the bull crossed the sea.