TRANSBORDER PROVOCACIONES THROUGH LOZANO-HEMMER’S BORDER TUNER | SINTONIZADOR FRONTERIZO PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION

Abstract

In November 2019, Lozano-Hemmer’s Border Tuner landed on the Juárez-El Paso border. It was a participatory public art installation that used six individual stations, each consisting of three powerful searchlights controlled with a dial and a microphone that allowed users to hold conversations with people in any of the other stations by intersecting their beams. While literal bridges of light were drawn, the oppressive implications of the technology and contemporary art’s penchant for mining and abandoning communities meant that Border Tuner had to earn the trust of “la frontera” if it hoped to be meaningful within an area molded by economic, political, cultural, linguistic, and social gaps and a community that otherwise claims to coexist as one. The authors were commissioned to write and perform two poems to bookend the 11-night engagement, joining many other local artists, activists, and educators that became stakeholders in the Border Tuner. They collaborated with a set of specific objectives in mind, which will be deconstructed using their own poetry as a road map. In order to differentiate between the two voices, and in keeping with the conceit of Border Tuner, Blancas-Beltran will use the left side and De la Rosa-Carrillo the right, while the poems will retain their original form and language in the center of the page as their shared, liminal space.