Porous Borders: Ambiguities, Uncertainties, and Gaps in Urban History, Identities, and Data

Mobile Subjects: Contrapuntal Modernisms (1945-1989) investigates the circulation of artists from the decolonizing world through the colonial and artistic capitals of London and Paris. This tale of two cities considers how these capitals of decolonizing empires functioned as critical meeting places, anti-colonial hubs, and sites of exchange in the decades after World War II due to postwar mass migration. It proposes a new analytical model that sees metropoles not as points of origin or as global training grounds, but as spaces of intersection and flow that allow us to understand the transnational condition of modern art. This paper will address these questions through select data samples and models that illustrate our aim to combine networks with spatio-temporal models, and our encounters, reflections, and decisions in light of ambiguities, multiplicities, uncertainties, and gaps. It will conclude with a series of further questions that projects dealing with similar issues can consider to interrogate their own practices.