1 Geographies of Violence Site-Oriented Art and Politics at the Mexico-U.S. Border From the 1980s to the Present Paula Brailovsky Ruiz PhD Thesis University College London 2014. 2 I, Paula Brailovsky Ruiz, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Abstract Through a series of case studies, analysed via the theoretical framework of site- specificity, this thesis explores the ways in which artists, from the 1980s to the present, have attempted to critically represent and understand more fully the socio- political fabric of the Mexico-U.S. border and the systemic violence that undergirds it. The introduction discusses the historical and political context of the thesis, establishes its methodological territory and outlines the current research of this field. Chapter One focuses on the collective Border Art Workshop/Taller the Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF) arguing, with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival, that these artists tried to propose an new and more amicable narrative of the Mexican and U.S. history. Chapter Two focuses on performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña whose work, created at the height of the institutionalisation of multiculturalism, analysed the role of capitalism in creating and sustaining attitudes that operated along the pernicious lines of race and nationality. Chapter Three examines Ursula Biemann’s video-essay Performing the Border, where the artist analyses female deskilled labour carried out in sweatshops in northern Mexico. I examine how she attempts to represent the hypermobility of capital vis-à-vis the physical immobility of the assembly plant worker. Chapter Four deals with Chantal Akerman’s film From the Other Side, arguing that her focus on landscape not only reveals how national narratives are often tied to representations of landscape, but also offers valuable insights into the journeys that migrants have to endure in order to cross the border. Chapter Five reviews the work of Teresa Margolles and her engagement with the so- called ‘drug war’ that has witnessed deaths in the tens of thousands. She uses bodily fluids obtained from victim’s corpses—often vaporised thus invading the nostrils of her audience—and in doing so she forces an unprecedented encounter with a section of the population unmatched by visual systems of representation. Providing a counter-narrative to the triumphalist renderings of globalisation, my aim is to underline how the category of the nation-state still remains the dominant frame of our current political reality. 4 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………….…………………………...…7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………..…………..…………………8 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………13 A ‘Border Art’ History? Counter-narratives of Globalisation ……………………………….…..20 A Line in the Sand? Redefining the Borders of the Nation-State…………………………….…27 Warped Representations: Surveillance and Spectacle at the Border………………………...32 Site-Oriented Practices and the Expanded Site of the Nation-State ………………………….37 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………43 CHAPTER ONE Violent Beginnings: Recycling Historical Narratives in The Border Art Workshop’s The End of the Line…………………………………………………….…………………. 46 Transnational Histories: Conceptual Art’s Legacy…………………………………………….……..49 New Genre Public Art and Collaborative Paradigms: Food, Ritual and Community…..58 Border Stereotypes? The Politics of Multiculturalism, Rasquachismo and the Carnivalesque ………………………………………………………………………………………………….......65 Questioning the Nation-State: Recycling Binational History……………………………….……80 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………89 CHAPTER TWO Systems of Exclusion and the Politics of Alterity: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the ‘Ethnographic Turn’…………………………………………………………………………...90 Site-Oriented Practices: From First to Second Wave of Institutional Critique…………...92 The ‘Ethnographic Turn’: ‘Framing the Framer’ in Site-Oriented Performance Art…...99 Measuring Public Opinion: Polls, Vox Pop and Comedy as a Social Science……………..105 The Comic Logic of Postmodernism: The Subversive Potential of Jokes…………………115 Corporate Branding: (Humorously) Marketing Otherness…………………………………….123 ‘Ethnic Festivals’ The Experience Economy and the Marketing of History………..…….130 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………….140 5 CHAPTER THREE Representing Femicide and the Im(mobilities) of Assembly-line Work: Listening to the Movements of Corporate Globalisation in Ursula Biemann’s Performing the Border……………………………………………………...……………142 Acknowledging the Limits of Representation: The Documentary and Ethnographic Turn…………………………………………………………………………………………………...………………145 Disassembling and Reassembling Bodies: Gender Matters to Capital……………………..151 Representational Bans: Workers Leaving the Factory……………………………………...……160 Choreographing the Movements of Corporate Globalisation: Bodily and Vehicular Im(mobilities)………………………………………………………………………………………...…………..173 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...……………………..186 CHAPTER FOUR Bloodstained Landscapes: Chantal Akerman’s Spatial Politics in From the Other Side……………………………...………………………………………………………….…………………..188 Embracing a Culture of Itinerancy: Ethnographic Travelogues………………………………189 A Blank Slate? Representation of the Mexico- U.S. Border………………………...…………...196 Topographies of Violence: Representing the Mexico-U.S. Borderscape…………...……...201 Embodied Wanderings: Extended Duration and Landscape …………………………….……208 A Disoriented World: Traversing Smooth Terrain…………………………………………………214 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….....223 CHAPTER FIVE The Politics of Mourning and Remembrance in the Work of Teresa Margolles: Representing Violence at the Mexico-U.S. Border…………………………………….………………………………………………………………..………224 ‘Ungrievable Lives’ and Necropolitics at the Borderlands……………………………...………226 Towards Abstraction: Strategies for Representing Violence…………………………...……..232 The Materiality of Death: Teresa Margolles and the Counter-Image………...…………….242 Beyond Representation: The Trace and the Materiality of Death in Teresa Margolles’ Work…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..248 Remembering the ‘Other’: Liquid Fear and Olfactory Memory……………………………….253 Narrating Violence and Building Counter-Monuments………………………………...………..260 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………...…..271 6 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………...…………..274 BIBLIOGRAPHY/FILMOGRAPHY……...……………………………………………….....285 ILLUSTRATIONS………………………..………………………………………………………………..321 7 Acknowledgements I extend my gratitude to the History of Art Faculty at UCL for creating an intellectually stimulating environment and for everything I have learned there. The support, advice and camaraderie of my fellow students and friends at UCL has been invaluable especially those of Stephanie Straine, Danielle Thom, Lauren Rotenberg, Teresa Kittler and Flavia Frigeri. Artists David Ávalos and Michael Schnorr have provided indispensable information and insights without which my first chapter would not be possible. I am also especially grateful to my supervisor T.J. Demos, for his encouragement, support, patience, generosity and for everything that he has taught me. Most of all I would like to thank my friends and parents, especially my father, not only for reading this thesis but also for being my main source of inspiration, without whose intellectual companionship, encouragement and boundless support I would not be where I am. 8 List of Illustrations INTRODUCTION 0.1 Allan Sekula, Dead Letter Office (Republican Convention), 1997. 0.2 Allan Sekula, Dead Letter Office (Ensenada), 1997. 0.3 Javier Téllez, One Flew Over the Void, 2005. 0.4 César Saëz, Geostationary Banana Over Texas, 2008. CHAPTER ONE 1.1 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line, 1986. 1.2 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line, 1986. 1.3 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line, 1986. 1.4 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line, 1986. 1.5 Proceso Pentágono. El Secuestro (Kidnapping), Mexico City, 1973. 1.6 Asco. First Supper (After a Major Riot), 1974. 1.7 Yolanda M. López, Who’s the Illegal Alien Pilgrim? 1978. 1.8 David Ávalos. Lotería Chicana, 1983. 1.9 Suzanne Lacy, Whisper, The Waves, the Wind, 1984. 1.10 Oskar Schlemmer, The Triadic Ballet, 1922. 1.11 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line, 1986. 1.12 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line, 1986. 1.13 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line,1986. 1.14 Victor Ochoa. Untitled, 1986. 1.15 Victor Ochoa. Untitled, 1987. 1.16 Victor Ochoa, Border Bingo/ Lotería Fronteriza, 1987. 1.17 Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1979. 1.18 David Ávalos, Border Fence as Möbius Strip (Border Realities III), 1987. 1.19 Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo The Border Art Workshop (BAW/TAF) 1984-1989 (retrospective catalogue), 1988. 1.20 Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo The Border Art Workshop (BAW/TAF) 1984-1989 (retrospective catalogue), 1988. 1.21 Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo The Border Art Workshop (BAW/TAF) 1984-1989 (retrospective catalogue), 1988. 1.22 The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo. The End of the Line,1986. 1.23 Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo, The End of the Line (Café Urgente), 1987. 9 CHAPTER TWO