Mapping the Aesthetic Dimensions of Power: Ethically Wayfinding across Borders

Indigenous and Southern experiences of colonial spatial, extractivist activity are contextually important for critical geographical and geospatial studies concerned with the effects of power and control systems on communities. Critical theory is used across corporeal and cognitive modalities in these contexts to generate creative actions for change. In this paper, we discuss performances, installations and collaborations emerging out of the Mapping Porous Borders project, led by artists in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Chile. Video examples of artistic mappings made during the pandemic, specifically Dependence and Independence by Francisco Gonzalez (Chile/United States), Chaosgraph: Scales of Infection by Linda Knight and alys longley (Australia/New Zealand) and the exhibition A Tilting Body of Precarious Maps and Migrant Constellations, curators alys longley and Kate Stevenson (New Zealand/United States) focus on the ways critically theorised artistic mapping and counter-mapping resist isolation and border closures through practices of collaboration and solidarity, allowing us to ‘push back’ against colonial imperatives. We assert that artistic collaboration allows for exchanging ideas on the aesthetic dimensions of power at a material level across different geopolitical contexts and living conditions. These emerge in the relationships between our artistic works, critical theory and perspectives of the Global South through practice, conversation and knowledge exchange.