Seamless Transitions is a 3D video tour of three British sites of immigration detention, trial, and deportation: Field House, home of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), designed for the presentation of secret evidence; Harmondsworth IRC at Heathrow, part of the UK’s detention estate; and the Inflite Jet Centre. Modeled on planning documents and eyewitness accounts, the work re-creates these highly political but architecturally bland spaces that denied asylum seekers pass through before their rendition by air—spaces that are otherwise invisible in public life.

Seamless Transitions unveils the secret infrastructure of detention, judgment, and deportation. It applies a forensic sensibility to 3D demonstrative evidence for visualizing the architecture, administration, and politics of high-security sites. Proceeding from the history of visual perspective and the representation of complex spatial and social systems, these investigative strategies for capturing and rendering reality with 3D reconstructions have the potential to expand the field of visibility and public accountability.

Read Infrastructural Violence: The Smooth Spaces of Terror by Susan Schuppli.