My guide is a bath toy. The toy is a chain of linkable, resin buoys, each buoy with a different quote from someone who has immigrated to the United States engraved on the inner wall of its spherical, translucent shell. My guide enables physical engagement with a miniaturized version of the floating barrier at the Mexico-United States border in the Rio Grande.
Development Timeline:
- I was assigned the topic “Floating” and the subtopic “Migration”
- I wanted to use this assignment as an opportunity to educate myself on political happenings and facts regarding migration
- I first approached the concept of a “floating population”, specifically in the Chinese context. I was intrigued to learn about this phenomenon of thousands of people migrating to follow work opportunities. This phenomenon is nothing new to civilization, but I had never heard it described as a “floating population” and I was curious to understand the specific implications of that term.
- I happened upon articles about the floating barrier at the US (Texas)-Mexico border. I was surprised to find out that this exists and that it was installed relatively recently (summer of 2023). Through reading a couple news articles, the systems and stakeholders around this floating barrier began to make sense to me. I felt like I was learning what I originally hoped to learn. This hope was born out of care for others and the desire to turn my attention towards all the things happening in the world with other people and away from myself and my usual thoughts within the bubble of my community and habits. I kept saying I wanted to de-ignorize myself. My struggles with my attention span make it difficult for me to be the well-read, broadly-informed person I aspire to be. (Perhaps there is a greater conversation about artist and ego to be had here.)
- I decided to focus on this floating barrier, as I was intrigued by this specific object and what its assigned purpose is, and what that can tell us about people, governments, foreign relations, interpersonal relations, people’s relationship to technology, etc. It fit my assigned topics in multiple ways, and I was sort of embracing this coloring-inside-of-the-lines approach because this project was rather long-term, and I suspected the more I complicated and abstracted at the start, the more lost and stuck I’d be under these deadlines.
- I read articles and watched videos, mostly from news outlets.
- I met with Margaret the librarian, who sent me scholarly articles that deepened my research and my conceptual understanding of border politics and the treatment of migrants by systems and governments.
- I remained fixated on the images of the barrier. I had never seen such oversized buoys. Such a simple object scaled out of its usual proportion looked almost silly, but was being weaponized against entire peoples.
- I decided to follow my intrigue: I committed to keeping form, 3D shape as a key characteristic of what my guide would be. I also came across a diorama of a human heart that reminded me how 3D objects can be educational when they are labeled and people can interact with them, like in medical trainings or science class.
- I wanted to take advantage of this year of access to fancy machinery, and I’ve been drawn to the aesthetic of resin sculptures for a couple years, so I researched how to sculpt with resin through NYU. I found the Tandon makerspace and went through several online and in-person tutorials to be able to use the 3D resin printing machines. The Form 3 was available for student use, but the Objet30 printed with biomedical amber resin. The translucency and color of this material was the most eye-catching for me.
- I researched resin and began to find meaning in the affordances of the medium:
- translucence: I could have something that is meant to be seen on the inside of the sculpture. I thought that the illegibility of whatever information (thinking of info because keeping in mind this sculpture is meant to guide in some way) I put inside the sculpture could be a metaphor for the accessibility issues migrants face when crossing the border. Physical ability affects the ability to cross the river and the desert and now to get around or through the floating buoy barrier in the Rio Grande. Technological ability affects migrants’ chances of achieving asylum status in the United States, as the CBP One application opens a lottery for only five minutes every morning, and faster phones have a better chance at winning a slot for an asylum-seeking appointment.
- airtightness: can float, would allow the sculpture to exist in water. This allowed me to envision the guide’s context as water, as floating on the surface of some liquid somewhere.
- protection/healing: I read that tree resin acts as a protective barrier against pests and other harmful agents and as a healing sealant when a tree is cut. This quality of resin brought an element of care and healing to the sculptural object. I saw it as a subversion to the hostile intentions of Texas’s buoys.
- I interviewed Steven, an old friend from a family of Laotian refugees. His words became integral to the content of the guide. Straight from the horse’s mouth. A guide as a primary source of information. Of emotional information, not statistical, empirical. I modeled the buoy with the interior engraving: “When I go home I want it to be perfect.” in a font called Lao something. These words had an impact on me. I could really feel into them. The feeling when you care about something so much that you don’t do it. You don’t approach it. You want it to be perfect. I have never experienced it the way Steven has, but I’ve experienced my own version of it in many instances throughout my life. Steven is still planning when and how he’ll set foot on Laos for the first time in his life.
- From here, I went through the process of printing. While waiting for the print to come back from the makerspace, I attended a talk, which Sarah sent to me, with an artist named Federico. His research on the Rio Grande and the ecological landscapes resistance to political definitions expanded my perspective on the meanings of the barrier and brought my awareness to the potential of my own research to grow. The more you know, the more you don’t know.
- After I retrieved the print, I tested if it floated in water. It did. Some of the words didn’t show up clearly, so I’ll have to keep iterating. And the hooks for linking buoys together came off in the supports-removal process. Kindly, the makerspace promised me a free reprint.
- Robi suggested I replace the lost hooks with wire, so I stripped some wire from the floor at 370 Jay St. and twisted it into the grooves of the buoy’s surface. I also put some orange wire on for decoration that matches the ratchet straps or whatever kinds of belts are on the actual buoys in the Rio Grande.
- Right before the presentation, I went back to a source from Margaret about the use of borders to occupy, terrorize, and control. I read some pages from the chapter and tried to fill some holes in my understanding of the Israeli occupation and its weaponization of borders. I wanted a fuller understanding of the border as a technology of oppression. I read enough to feel prepared for my presentation, but left off with a desire to keep working and learning.
Some things I learned along the way:
- how to use the resin printers at the engineering makerspace
- more skills in Autodesk Fusion 360 3D modeling
- that the floating barrier in the Rio Grande exists, what it’s made of, the political disputes (systems and stakeholders) around it
- about the differences in the Texas state government’s approach and relationship to immigration policy enforcement and the federal government’s approach and relationship to immigration policy and enforcement
- the meaning of “floating population”
- about disputes in the South China Sea and in southern Europe and North Africa over water territories and borders
- the impact of metaphors in how we talk about immigration (specifically the effects of the “inundation metaphor”)
- some of the ideological implications of a physical border as a means of marking political boundaries
- about how drone surveillance technology works at borders
- about the CBP One App that the Biden administration is using to grant asylum-seeking appointments in a cruel, bewildering, lottery-based model
Feedback I received:
- Nuff said that my mind is poetic, and that I absorbed information/synthesized input and turned it into emotion, and that I distilled everything in the presentation into “an orb with four or five words on it.” (Thanks, Nuff:)) Then he asked how I imagine bath time/playtime unfolding, whether it’s kids assembling the barrier or getting into a bath that is already divided. I realize now that I didn’t really answer this question (oops) because I knew that I was imagining the kid doing the assembly of buoys into a chain, however I did not respond with this information. I think I projected a question I already had onto Nuff’s question, about whether or not kids should actually come into contact with the toy, or if it’s more of a sculpture masquerading, or being labeled, as a toy for conceptual reasons. Watching the recordings and realizing I didn’t properly hear out Nuff’s question makes me want to be a more patient listener from now on, though I have compassion for the post-public speaking adrenaline that was partly driving me. Nuff was making an important distinction, which I’d like to consider as I keep developing this project, between the one who creates the barrier and the one who is subjected to the barrier.
- Praise drew attention to the aspect of the parent (or “a person with dominance” as they described it) being tasked with framing the toy, saying what it is, to the child. I am grateful to Nuff and Praise for bringing these considerations to light for me. Praise also said they could see these buoys I’m creating linked together in a pool or a river. This inspired me to envision these buoys in the actual Rio Grande, alongside the barrier. This is an idea I hope to come back to as I keep researching and experimenting.
- I also got really helpful feedback from Sarah(👀 ) in our one-on-one meeting. You said that I could make different projects, perhaps a series, from the many different points in my research that I found meaningful, but for the constraints of this project, it might help me (and it did) to pick just a couple parts of the research to become relevant to this one object of the buoy toy.
Reflections on critique:
- It’s really helpful to hear how others experience something I’ve made and what questions arise for them in this experience. I am grateful to feel like something I put down was picked up, and simultaneously curious about what was picked up that I didn’t put down or what third or fourth or fifth thing is happening in the encounter.
- I think I’m at a point in this project where a lot of critique would be helpful, but I can see how it would have confused me at earlier points in the project. It’s nice to experience this threshold in a longer term project where I feel critique is super helpful, as opposed to a 1-week project, where so many avenues are yet unexplored for the project.
My project remained very relevant to the original topics assigned to me, and I hung onto many ideas presented in class, for example: subverting a form, conveying systems and stakeholders, crafting new metaphors and calling old ones into question. I really studented on this project, partly out of fear of getting lost outside the template. But I also feel that I pushed my creativity, though I did this with patience and in small increments, avoiding the internal stress and pressure to do something wildly unexpected and creative right off the bat.
At some point, I decided I wanted my guide to be accessible and to exist beyond the art gallery space. This desire brought me to the form of a bath toy, which suddenly plopped a satirical tone onto the guide, which I wasn’t sure how to handle for awhile. But I tried to balance this tone with the melancholic gravity of Steven’s words. I wasn’t really sure where this juxtaposition pointed the audience, but I stuck with my feeling that it was the right direction for the project. After all my hesitations around incorporating the playfulness of toys into a serious topic like borders and migration, I am inspired now to see how I can further push the concept by means of irony, paradox, juxtaposition. I think I keep getting this feeling that there are more crevices to this idea than I could originally see.
I balanced research and experimentation better than I have in the past, in that I was able to commit to the crafting process early while remaining open to further research that I would continue to do alongside the making. I frequently worried that I hadn’t done enough research. On the night before the project was due, I felt like I had a lot more concept to work out and information to learn before the presentation. This worry caused me to stay up most of the night, finishing investigations within the topic I’d started but left off with weeks before. I was also intimidated by the 3D modeling on Autodesk Fusion 360 and the task of getting that model to print properly with resin (I even had a stress dream about the Objet3 machine’s warning notifications “not enough supports” or “cupping risk”). I am proud of myself though, because I can feel how these kinds of worries feel less paralyzing and insurmountable than in the past. I can feel myself gaining confidence as an artist and as a productive person in general, which is a beautiful gift from these assignments, both this semester and last.
Sitting in the research phase is easier for me, and I was aware of this form of procrastination that exists in me, so I forced myself to start experimentation before I was ready in the doubtful part of my brain. Really glad I did this. I’ve hardly ever felt so on top of a project deadline, despite the final late night (still working out what happens psychologically there, but I have my suspicions). I can focus next time on following through with the lines of research that most intrigue me, rather than feeling the intrigue and procrastinating the further digging. In other words, I can read the resources and take relevant information from them more actively, instead of leaving their tabs open for days and weeks. I can make my research process more efficient and organized if I do this, while leaving the links to these resources accessible for me in case I want to go back and learn more from them.
I consolidated most of my documented process into this Research Trail Are.na both for the legibility/comprehension of others and for my own organization, to set myself up to continue working on this project without too much of my own resistance. There, you can find relevant snippets from my blogposts over the past seven weeks, my ideas and pivots along the way, process pictures from the making of the guide, and web articles and artist inspiration that shaped my progress.
References
Garbus, M. (2018). Environmental Impact of Border Security Infrastructure: How Department of Homeland Security’s Waiver of Environmental Regulations Threatens Environmental Interests Along the U.S.-Mexico Border. Tulane Environmental Law Journal, 31(2), 327–344. https://www.jstor.org/stable/90021700
M. Hallett, “Australian perspectives on waterside security,” 2010 International WaterSide Security Conference, Carrara, Italy, 2010, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/WSSC.2010.5730247.
Jimenez, T., Arndt, J., & Landau, M. J. (2021). Walls Block Waves: Using an Inundation Metaphor of Immigration Predicts Support for a Border Wall. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(1), 159-171. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.6383
Myrivili, E. (2004). The liquid border: Subjectivity at the limits of the nation -state in southeast europe (Order No. 3115362). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (305206662). Retrieved from http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fdissertations-theses%2Fliquid-border-subjectivity-at-limits-nation-state%2Fdocview%2F305206662%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12768
Sze, J. Boundaries of Violence: Water, Gender and Globalization at the US Borders. 2007. Published in International Feminist Journal of Politics. Volume 9. Issue 4. Page 475.
Borders, fences, and walls (2016). In Vallet E. (Ed.), . New York, NY: Routledge (Publisher). Retrieved from https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C3911520
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