BORDER ART: A PRIMER

A very brief and biased account of the border in Tijuana art. Mostly.

A text with Pictures by Luisa Martinez and Reuben Torres

“Burroughs described [Mexico] as a place of vicious queers. Artaud, as a country that would destroy the

West. Artaud was right.”

Heriberto Yepez

THE POSTBORDER IS BULLSHIT

The idea of the border (i.e. Tijuana) as a glamorized, utopian realm of happy fusion where old barriers are eradicated –– has plagued ‘border art’ for years.

It’s an easy idea to sell. High-brow meets low-brow. Third world meets first world. Goodbye contradictions. Hello melting pot.

Sadly, however, it just doesn’t stand up very well under scrutiny.

Here, we’ll operate under the premise that good writer’s copy, but great writes paste:

“The postborder, as such, is an outdated concept. The postborder implies a continuation of logics, a shared system, or a continuous or correlative zone (economic or semiotic). But, what operates on both sides of the border are discontinuities, fractures, and as I like to put it, faults.”**

**That’s a quote by Heriberto Yepez, a writer from Tijuana whose ideas we will be riffing (read: stealing) for a good part of this writing. (But I mean, the dude’s on to something.)

Looks like a fun guy.

At the heart of the Postborder is the idea of “hybridization,” a sort of umbrella term that was adapted –– in a somewhat decontextualized manner –– from the works of Néstor García Canclini to describe the “Postborder condition”.

This notion of “hybridity” assumes an apolitical mix of two cultures -- what Yepez refers to as the “The Happy Hybrid” –– wherein their differences yield to a more holistic and unified character.

This has led many to perceive the border region --and border art in particular-- as being in a category of its own.

- Heriberto Yepez - (Tijuana, 1974) is an essayist, translator of poetry, and narrator. For many authors, he’s the most visible intelligence in his generation (which partly is why we unabashedly pilfer his ideas in this writing). He has published a number of works pertaining to the US-Mexico border, in varying formats, such as poetry, short story, essay, novel, literary theory and translation. A staunch critic of the notion of ‘hybridity,’ Yepez sees this category as the commodification of contradiction, a way of neutralizing the Other and packaging it for mass consumption.

A number of border artists through the years, have no doubt benefited or taken from this idea.

In fact, for a while, this idea held so much clout, that it sparked a number of exhibits and cultural events around it.

This trend saw its apotheosis in a series of cultural activities titled Tijuana Tercera Nación (2004), which centered around the notion of “hybridization” –– which for its purposes, was synonymous with “americanization” or “globalization”.

Yet, as Yepez is wont to signal, this notion of “hybridity” –– rooted in Postmodern rhetoric -- is inherently fallacious. It seeks to neutralize the tension between both cultures, through a purported synthesis which in reality exacerbates both cultures’ hegemonic elements and its most reactionary impulses.

There’s is no Third Nation. Only a reaffirmation of the initial two.

- TIJUANA TERCERA NACIÓN -

Tijuana Tercera Nación (or, Tijuana Third Nation) was an exhibit and series of cultural activities which took place in Tijuana between the months of April and June of 2004. The exhibit was a thinly veiled laudation for US and Mexico economic policies, i.e, neoliberal and pro-globalization. Their own website described the project as an: “Exploration of the creative richness, diversity, and synthesis of the border. Result of a multicultural proposal whose purpose is to show, through plastic and visual arts, music, film, and literature, the development of creatives at the northern border. This collective exhibition emerges as an encounter that summarizes the creative vitality and diversity of the city, as well as the elements of cultural fusion.”

- NAFTA -

In 1994, former heads of state George H. W. Bush, Brian Mulroney and Carlos Salinas, signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), whose primary aim was to curtail restrictions to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The idea being that these three countries would find investment opportunities in one another. While the agreement was beneficial to a select few –– amassing great amounts of wealth for an elite –– it proved catastrophic to other, more impoverished sectors of society. Its detrimental effects were felt on various sectors of the economy, causing massive layoffs and plummeting wages, not to mention the devastating effect that it caused for agriculture workers, who saw communal land sharing systems dismantled. Of course, one of the most devastating byproducts of NAFTA has been its role in contributing ––and in many ways exacerbating-- Mexico’s drug trafficking trade, the effects of which continue to be felt to this day in the ongoing drug wars.

One could easily perceive how such an idea would lend itself well to a pro-globalist (read: neo-liberal) agenda, as a way of validating US and Mexico economic policies. This is especially true in light of agreements like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), which was celebrating its tenth anniversary when Tercera Nación took place.

Thus so-called border art of the nineties and early aughts, ended up in large part being utilized as a validation of this economic discourse. As Yepez describes, this idea of hybridization was a sort of apologist for globalization, a rah-rah of post-modernism.With the passing of the years, and new generations of border artists coming about, it became especially difficult to maintain the idea of a “Happy Hybrid,” to keep the contradictions and incompatibilities at bay.

And indeed, how could one think of a unified region given more recent events as...

Tightening border security in the wake of 9/11...

Its increasing militarization...

U.S. immigration policies, which have left many displaced...

The bloody aftermath of the drug wars… (in which the U.S. also has its share of the blame)

The tension between both cultures has only made itself more manifest in the past few years.

The border, its heavy presence, has increasingly become a reaffirmation of these inherent contradictions, conflicts, and general incompatibility.

After all, there is no border without a clash; a unified region and a border cannot coexist.

There is, in short, no postborder.

- POSTBORDER CITY -

The idea of the Postborder has been touted in books like Where North Meets South. Cities, Space, and Politics on the U.S.-Mexico Border and Postborder City: Cultural Spaces of Bajalta California. The latter opens by stating that the region comprising Southern California region and Baja California, referred by some as Bajalta California –– specially composed of Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and Mexicali –– no longer represents separate cities with individual economies and cultures, but is now part of a single city region, that just happens to be separated by a border. All of these books do their best to expand the notion of Tijuana as a “hybrid” and “postmodern” space.

- MILITARIZED BORDER -

Since 9/11, the US Department of Homeland Security has made increased efforts to expand surveillance along the Southern border. In recent years, Congress has passed legislation that has increased spending on border security to almost ridiculous degrees, as a militaristic countermeasure to the influx of immigrants and drug trafficking across the US Mexico border. As a 2013 article on Motherboard stated, Congress poured nearly $46 billion dollars into securing the borders, which went into increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, expanding the border fence, high-tech surveillance technology, including unmanned aerial drones and radar systems, as well as technology that allows employers to check the immigration status of employees.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña, “The Crucifiction Project” (1984)

Of course, not all border art has followed the notion of the “Happy Hybrid”. In later years, many border artists did, in fact, come to characterize their art through the elucidation of the inherent contradictions in both cultures.

Artists like Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Marcos “ERRE” Ramirez, Nortec Collective, Rubén Ortiz Torres, and Gerardo Yépiz (ACAMONCHI), have to a certain degree parodied and subverted the concept of cultural fusion and the “hybrid” through their works.

This way of relating to the cultural clash, through irony and self-awareness, is admittedly more on point. Yet, it has always been a tricky line to walk.

What is successful on paper can always be commodified, the irony ignored, and its byproducts made fit for mass consumption (i.e, rendered “cool”).

“Border art” as an aesthetic has worked its way towards a weighty connotation. It has been made into a thing. It carries an identity that can be signaled out not only through a particular style and set of signifiers, but also through a specific “political” agenda.

- Toy and Horse -

Toy and Horse (InSite, 1997) is a work by Tijuana artist, Marcos Ramirez ERRE. It is 33-foot-high outdoor sculpture that was commissioned for a site-specific exhibition entitled inSITE97. Originally situated at the border-crossing site between the United States and Mexico, the sculpture was a double-headed toy horse that had one head facing Mexico and the other facing the United States. Though distinctly layered, the work touches on themes such as the mutual flow of culture and commerce, the collision of opposing poles, cultural miscommunication, as well the general incompatibility of US and Mexican cultures. The work is emblematic of its generation and one of the foremost border art works of any epoch.

This political stance -- which sought to be diminished through the “Happy Hybrid”, the apolitical mix of two cultures-- has inevitably peaked its head again through later art, acknowledging the evident clash found in the geographical region.

Yet due to the playfulness that has characterized a lot of “border art”, the hybrid still seems to be the automatic category through which one tries to define that which is from the border (lo fronterizo).

Past attempts at mocking the idea of a “Happy Hybrid” have resulted in illustrations that seem aware that the notion of thinking oneself American, or thinking oneself Mexican, are both inane concepts.

Yet, at the same time, these place the artist in a third, separate category one that can potentially be rendered complacent.

Here, we may find certain parallels between Border art and Chicano art.

Both seek to forge a new identity out of a fusion of old ones, operating under the misapprehension that the new one superior is superior to the old.

In both instances, this new identity has been used as a way to resist hegemonic practices.

Chicano artists have gained recognition through the use of muralism, ethnic and rural imagery, and other heavily identifiable icons.

But the ‘taking back’ of this imagery is seldom fruitful.

After all, there still exists a Mexican, an American, and a Chicano identity. These are all “singularities” that can and often times are co-opted to put forth a political agenda.

The reason why they have so often been utilized and co-opted by the controlling sector to begin with, is because they are easily digestible.

These are romantic tellings that can unify people, but also keep them as oppressed and segregated as before, through pride and reminiscing of the self as a romanticized other. As Yepez points out:

Thus, it would appear that the aim should not be to create a new identity, but rather, to question the very notion of identity.

Yet how does one destroy something that one is?

“An identity prevents you from being indivisible from everything that surrounds you. [...] All identities are a system of defense, they are made to attack and protect. An identity is a set of fears.”

In the past, some artists have addressed the issue of identity through varying practices that aim to challenge existing paradigms.

ASCO collective, a Chicano art group that began in the 1980s, went beyond the heavily commodified notions of what was understood as Chicano art.

Through the use of conceptual art, performance, video-art, and happenings --the currency of a certain post-chicano-ism -- they revealed how one could possibly work within an identity, as to have weight amongst a public, yet rearrange or destroy its components.

More recently, there has been a shift towards a new form of cultural production in the border. Tijuana writer Alfredo González Reynoso has described this shift as one that veers away from the binary understanding of a clash of opponents, and ventures toward a more isolationist or rhizomatic approach.

What characterizes this new wave of artists -- according to Reynoso -- is a pervading crisis of identity, though not in the way we have come to understand it. That is, not as a crisis between two separate, opposing identities -- like the US and Mexico –– but rather as a crisis between contrasting elements within a single identity.

The artists of Ruidosón --a musical scene birthed in Tijuana around 2008-- have continued the tradition of utilizing what we can categorize as elements of Mexican popular culture, though neither in an overt nor ironic way. Instead, they tear these elements apart, laying out all the components as symbols in conflict. Identities in transit, as Reynoso has pointed out.

Another artist whose work embodies this shift is Yvonne Venegas. What is notable is the way in which her photographs analyse notions of identity through the study of the affluent class. Yet her work does not contrast members of this class with another one -- like, say for example, the working class -- but rather, within its own disparities. It highlights, in other words, the contradictions which exist within a single identity.

One can surmise that the breaking apart of these elements is in some part due to recent shifts in social dynamics brought forth by phenomena like the Internet, our shifting relationship with globalization, and new patterns of migration, to name some.

What is clear is that border art in every form, from past to present, has been used as a means to question, critique, mock, and in its most radical mode, destroy the notion of identity.

Carlos Matsuo, “Violentao” (2013)

What we can take from this recent wave of art made in the border–– rhizomatic, self-reflexive, wary of identities –– is a potential direction for the future of border art.

The tools it provides allow us to re-think the original concerns of past border artists, namely, the clash between two opposing forces, moving beyond the notion of “hybridization” and the use of irony, and using a more self-reflexive approach, one which critiques and potentially dismantles traditional notions of identity.

As border art has demonstrated in the past, it is the notion of identity which must be put into question. The goal, however, should not be to replace one identity with a new one, but rather, to eradicate identity as such.

We dismantle ourselves (internal), in order to dismantle the oppressive systems which we are a part of (external).

In addition, this new approach towards border art allows us to think of the border beyond purely geographical terms. If one thing is clear within this shift, it is that the theoretical concerns precede the region. This allowing for its production to transcend space.

“The border, the gap between at least two disparate identities.” - Alfredo G. Reynoso

Carlos Matsuo, “Violentao” (2013)

In other words, border art is no longer bound or restricted to or by the border region, but rather, is exacerbated within and made more apparent by the border region.

Finally, this new border art affords us a freedom of constituency. Through a liberation from geography, it becomes more and more clear that, even when addressing external concerns, similar to the ones focused on by past border artists, these concerns can be drawn from anyone who chooses to address them.

This opens up a way for artists –– who wouldn’t perhaps consider what they make to fall within the category of border art –– to contribute to this new found form of cultural production.

These non-border artists, through work in and with regions in which identities dissimilar to theirs reside, can play a part in the disruption and dismantling of these identities.

- RUIDOSÓN -

Ruidosón is a movement within electronic music that originated in Tijuana around the year 2009. It is characterized by its idiosyncratic use of popular Mexican music -- such as cumbia and tribal -- as well as its dark and brooding tone, which often times touches on social and political themes like corruption and violence. The movement thus far consists of the projects María y José, Los Macuanos, Santos and Siete Catorce, and the visual work of Pecco. Each act offers a unique take on the ruidosón aesthetic. The music of Santos uses a carnivalesque take on Cumbia and Onda grupera to sway listeners on the dance floor. Los Macuanos, on the other end, meld rave music with social critique, highlighting issues like the frightening control of state machinery, through the use of politically-charged samples and abrasive sounds, coupled with highly infectious and danceable rhythms. Maria y José pumps listeners with lyrics of death and killing, much like Narco-Corridos, but in more a politically aware and self-reflexive manner. Finally, Siete Catorce juxtaposes elements of contemporary Mexican rave music with more far out sounds that veer off almost entirely from their original source.

Through the understandings that recent border art allows, we arrive at the importance of a relationship between Los Angeles and Tijuana.

We have made clear that, guided by our comprehension of what border art can and should be, it behooves any artist to make border art. But we must address why it is important specifically for LA artists to become an integral part of the discourse surrounding border art -- beyond the obvious geographical proximity -- and look to Tijuana artists as collaborators in reaching the goals we have set forth.

Tijuana is a fertile crescent of both external and internal conflicts of identity. This is why, historically, we have understood border art as existing solely in this region and almost exclusively by the people in it.

This is the role that both Tijuana and Tijuana-bred artists play within our current understanding of border art.

Tijuana is a city ever in flux. In contrast to the major metropolises, such as LA or Mexico City –– which although in flux, are so in a less urgent manner––.

Tijuana finds itself constantly having to propose an alternative to itself. We do not encounter existing, and oft-times rigid paradigms as to who and what constitutes art.

The city’s inherent unsteadiness calls for new schematics to continually be thought out and created. That is, new ways of thinking about how art is produced, exhibited and curated.

Consequently, the disruption of identities becomes a manageable feat within the context of Tijuana, allowing for LA artists to propose untapped alternatives.

It remains important to note that these new proposals must come from an internal disruption of identities, not from past constructs.

There have been unsuccessful attempts in the past in which foreign entities have ventured into the region striving to propose new approaches.

These attempts can be seen as unsuccessful primarily due to two problematics: imposition and rejection. That is, a lack of openness from both parties.

What has often times been lacking from local players is the relation to foreign artists. There have been two responses, both erroneous: an adoration and a total rejection.

Foreign constituents are neither saviours nor conquerors. Tijuana must be open and willing to address its own concerns through the tools the foreigner affords, with a certain degree of accountability.

Foreign players have likewise displayed this attitude in the past. When met with either adoration or total rejection, the foreign player tends to assume one of two roles: self-congratulatory or completely defensive.

Again, a lack of openness to address artistic concerns through the tools of the region, and a reactionary imposition of past constructs, has veered these attempts unsuccessful.

As artists working within this context our roles have to be taken more seriously than in other possible scenarios. Art becomes a choice, a responsibility.

We must hold both sides accountable, with utmost scrutiny and flexibility, being weary of the trappings of colonialist and ethnocentric practices, in order to achieve a true disruption of the self and truly cohabitate the border, however one chooses to define it.

...

Luisa Martinez is a writer, cultural promoter, and Architecture school drop-out from “the border”. Hates bios. Likes cherries.

About the “Authors”

Reuben Torres is the founder of the Russian communist party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state, a writer, musician, and shameless self promoter from South San Diego (basically Mexico). He disseminates fascist propaganda in the guise of left field electronic music. Hates cats.

About the Real AuthorsAdditional Sources

We stole borrowed a lot of ideas from these sources.

You should probably check them out:

* Heriberto Yepez. “Made in Tijuana” (2005)

* Alfredo Gonzalez Reynoso. “Choques, rupturas, espectros: Avatares de la frontera en el arte tijuanense” (2012)

* Google