Introductory article and overview of issue 2 of the antiAtlas Journal, which focuses on the relationship between fiction and the border. The goal is to show how fiction, conceived as a strategy, cuts across and shapes very different approaches; whether they are the result of artistic experiments or of scientific research, they all tackle borders by being control mechanisms, political and economic operators and systems of representing space all at once.

The deportation of unregistered migrant Maria Amelie after the publication of her book Ulovlig norsk (2010) was a major media event in Norway. In her following book, Takk (2014), she constantly refers to windows, mirrors and camera lenses. Glass becomes a symbol of traumatic experience and configures the in/visibility of the deportation borderscape, creating a political aesthetics of the border.

This article takes up the elements of a thesis, A Lover’s Discourse: Frictions, defended at MIT. Raafat Majzoub presents two key concepts of his work, "Active Fiction" and "Sleeping Fiction", which allow him to think of his artistic approach as a narrative strategy in the political context of the Middle East. He combines excerpts from his novel, The Perfumed Garden: An Autobiography of Another Arab World and visual fragments of fictions and performances.

This article explores the potential of recording, composing or investigating borders’ sonic and vocal practices to “give voice” to these contested territories as dynamic, permeable and process-based apparatuses. It suggests that listening might be a useful instrument for a critical epistemology of the border, to rethink its linear image and the dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion in performative and relational ways.

This paper addresses the use of data and numbers in border management and proposes a criticism of the criticism against what is commonly named the datafication of borders. The current phenomenon is more a mathematization of borders, producing a particular topology of borders and using ways of computing data and numbers that are politically driven.

Many states are building barriers at their borders. This article analyzes these artifacts as symbols of "teichopolitics", i. e. space partitioning policies that are noticeable in closed cities as well as at international borders. It questions the materiality of these policies that mix visible and invisible elements, combining display and discretion.

How do images and their used participate in the violence of borders ? How can they on the contrary be used to contest this same violence ? We explore these questions through the „left-to-die boat“ case which we have documented, in which 72 passengers were left to drift for 14 days in the Mediterranean sea despite repeated interaction with state actors.

Creating a journal is a bet. That of the Antiatlas Journal is twofold: it assumes that the web offers new ways to articulate differently text, images and various media, and that this binding can renew our approach to such complex objects as the borders...

By developing new esthetic approaches, Border Art has problematized our relations to space. It has also disturbed the representations of what makes art and get closer to experimental geography. What theory of contradictory realities should we elaborate, in order to understand the role played by artists in this context of social and political activism?

The age-old question of the relationship between arts and sciences has taken on a new significance in recent years, and must be approached differently. We should analyse the different forms of scientific knowledge and the evolution of artistic practices. Photography, cinema and video had already deeply transformed art practices and their relation to science. Digital technologies have pushed forward these disruptions…

Both a paper and a cartography, Re-drawing The Experience reviews the setup of a research-creation process between an artist, a researcher and asylum seekers in Grenoble, France.

This article reviews the process of conception and development of a documentary and artistic video game: A Crossing Industry. It is elaborated by a transdisciplinary team and focuses on the functionning of the Israeli separation regime in the West Bank during the three years following the second Intifada (2007-2010).

As an aside to the adventurous realm of the arts/sciences relations (more usually called practise-based research and creation in English), this text puts the term “science” first, by offering to speak of “sciences-/arts”, and explores the critical potential of the added punctuation mark. It questions the specificity of social scientists’ commitment to carrying out experiments – and creating experiences – that are not simply beautiful or accessible but also have a political dimension. The text concludes with a proposal to renew the scientific pact.

"You think so because you are French!" - Samira told me (slightly) angrily when I said as a half joke that I saw no real man in front of me. She was wearing a frock and full make up while she claimed to be a real man like her father. And she was selling sex to other men ‘en travesti’ that night in Marseille.