^{Fuzzy Frontiers: Chennai’s compound walls and intermedial encroachment}

Walls are symbols and structures of social and material division. Much of the literature highlights the operation of walls as infrastructure that configures or represents aspects of state power (see Till et al., 2013). However, there is little research on walls as architectonic forms of the everyday that are mediated by a host of social actors, blurring their status as strictly formal or informal entities. This is an especially relevant gap regarding South Asian urbanisms, where the quotidian form of the compound wall plays a pivotal role as both a spatial divider and a dynamic surface for a variety of visual media. This article addresses this research gap by delving into the usages of compound walls and by highlighting the urban relations and territories that they configure within the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. This is undertaken by theorising the compound wall as an intermedial interstice that is not merely a spatial boundary, but a dynamic visual actor, mediating notions of the public and private, political discourses, and access to the city itself.