Function of Biopower

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Recommended: Discuss the concept of sovereignty

What I’m interested in exploring with the series of work Apparatus of Sovereign Power as Mechanisms of Control, are the functions of biopower (a term devised by French philosopher Michel Foucault which applies to the concept of controlling populations and managing people1), the political mechanisms through which biopower operates, and the effects on identity and the physical self. In this small body of work, I have created four drawings in charcoal that make an attempt to mock scenarios in which sovereign states utilize mechanisms (in the form of regulations and physical forces) to control and regulate large bodies of people and their territory.
In the accompanying titles of my work, the term “apparatus” has been appropriated from Michel Foucault2, but I have transformed his idea of the “Mechanism of Power” 3 into an eccentric set of reflections on the way sovereign states attempt to control and maintain influence over other populations. The apparatuses in the drawings are meant to illustrate the underlying processes taking place along borders, where people are subject to forces on their bodies (through things like checkpoints and terminals), their sovereignty, and their physical homeland. The very land and landscape become major components within the processes of biopower in regard to borders, and the way in which movement is limited, and territory is defined. The intent of this work is to describe the mechanics of biopower, and the sense of absurdness that seems to accompany it, using a visual language.
The first drawing in the series Apparatus for Controlling Sovereign Rule, depicts two masses of land (these represent a sovereign state or states) with a border down the middle separating the two. The landscapes or landmass...

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...eign and the One-Way Mirror." Global Visual Cultures; an anthology (2011): 102-103. Print.
5) Weizman, Eyal. "Checkpoints: The Split Sovereign and the One-Way Mirror." Global Visual Cultures; an anthology (2011): 104. Print.
6) Weizman, Eyal. "Checkpoints: The Split Sovereign and the One-Way Mirror." Global Visual Cultures; an anthology (2011): 105-106. Print.
7) Levy, Gideon. "Twilight Zone / Just Another Morning in Bethlehem." Haaretz.com. N.p., Sept.-Oct. 2012. Web. 30 Oct. 2013
8) Weizman, Eyal. "Checkpoints: The Split Sovereign and the One-Way Mirror." Global Visual Cultures; an anthology (2011): 107. Print.
9) Ratnam, Niru. "Art and Globalisation." Themes in Contemporary Art 2004th ser. (2004): 276-311. Print.
10) Nikolopoulou, Kalliopi, Giorgio Agamben, and Daniel Heller-Roazen. "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life." SubStance 29.3 (2000): 15-29. Print.

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