In this talk, I present my use of formal filmic techniques across two works to advance a visual argument about mobility and borders in South Asia. Borders are readily made legible through visual representations and material practices such as maps, fences, walls, passports, flags, news coverage, and the like. But what happens when one shuffles the narrative? I dice, splice, and recombine images of borders to generate a picture of the border that is not amenable to figurative absorption. Mainstream representations of the India-Pakistan border emphasize polarity, but I show that the border is a continuous space even as it is a marker of discontinuity. Specifically, my stylistic use of juxtaposition, montage, glitch, and split-screen exposes reductions and excesses of the nation-state order. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Thar Desert region, I will screen from A Gregarious Species (2023, 9 min) and Kitne Passports? (in-production) to convey how, like the filmic cut, the border produces a shared and segmented space. Culling together found footage and composing my own images, I argue that working within the visual medium itself can unravel mental pictures about the fixity of borders.

A Gregarious Species (2023, 9 min)

What do bugs and borders have to do with each other? Bringing together mobile phone videos of transboundary gregarious locust swarms, political rallies, and scientific webinars, this found-footage, experimental video raises questions about the selective porosity of borders amidst environmental crisis, farmer insecurity, and nationalism in South Asia.

Kitne Passports? (in production, 15-min visual sample)

What does waiting for a welcome feel like? Follow four, cross-caste Pakistani Hindu migrant families as they shift between minority and majority status, navigating uncertain futures in India.

Natasha Raheja is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Performing & Media Arts at Cornell University. She received her PhD in Anthropology from NYU and her BS in Biology and MA in Asian Languages and Literature with a focus on Urdu from UT Austin. Her film and writing projects explore questions of migration, belonging, and majority-minority politics in South Asia. Dr. Raheja is the director of Cast in India, an observational portrait of the Bengali metal workers who manufacture New York City manhole covers; and her book Selective Welcome: Pakistani Hindus in India is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press. 
Faculty profile: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/natasha-raheja