Dust and the Digital Borderland

In this talk, Ayesha Omer follows an overland fiber optic cable from China’s Xinjiang region across the internationally disputed territories of Kashmir to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, as part of China’s global Belt and Road Initiative. She charts the formation of a digital borderland in the Himalayan mountains through the institution of digital communications and border customs infrastructure. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, and leaked policy documents, this talk demonstrates that instantaneous digital connection is produced on fraught grounds in relation to local imaginaries of futures filled with “dust”.