Border as Network

Graduate Field Course - University of Arizona School of Art

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A Love Letter Because I’m So Sorry I Anthropomorphized the Gila

I would like to hold you                                                                                         In the manner of this arroyo

Her acacias reach out to tangle with your hair

          pulling you           keeping you for a moment

In her fury, in her strength           she has pulled down brush and branch           she has carved boulders                         that give you pause                         make you go slow be wary of your footing

Her bare surface is decorated           with dazzling turquoise veins           that draws your eye, your hand                        touching her gently                        you take only what you can carry and leave the rest

She wears creosote and ram dung                                           scent of hidden                                           scent of blind river                                                                              leading you in

Her banks are flanked by the wisdom                         of centennial saguaro                                   a forest of silent stories                                                                             writ in barbs

A young coyote dances through thickets                of barrel cactus and sage She laughs so poignant and cunning                                                            it cuts

Standing within her, she holds you                completely                                   and yet You do not know her she wears the marks of those who have tried to control her                 an iron fence post eaten away to shrapnel                                               she thrives                                               endures as witness 

                                              to the trauma                                                          of mines carved out of her sisters                                                                                                  surrounding her

When we return home you notice for the first time                 a small sharp pain                                                   splinters all over your hands and feet little reminders of her embedded in                 your weathered flesh

I take them out                                      one by one                 lay them out in the sink                                      like bodies                                      in line

                            kiss the wounds of puckered pink skin             and think about the dangers of metaphor

-R

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A boundary I consume and spit out

a boundary I cross with my tongue

one I consume and spit out, back at you

                 like cinnamonnaphtha

       transgress// swallow

and between                  us, always,                        language

-R

[soagradfieldcourse]

Thinking a lot about this picture from our voyage this past weekend.

-A.C.

[soagradfieldcourse]

writing to process...

us vs. them here and there freedom and something else not worthy of names until 

i met the wall today and she said nothing          froze in our presence as if an elk quicksand-ed itself to earth both reasons to save itself survival is instinct but i suppose now she is a part of the kingdom animalia now too i am the       prey, another set of eyes feasting on this land made for me                and you nothing sweeter than monuments of our death keeping us from  — dry down to the bones and shedding snake skin for lips in this place everything must go before she sprouts more legs for us to crawl between -TK

[soagradfieldcourse]

Space

Lately I’ve been thinking heavily on space in relation to what we discuss in this class and the readings we have been given. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández’ “Migrating To Prison, “ gives us a history of America’s reaction to immigration and the first immigrant detention centers in the first chapter “Laying the Groundwork.” In it, I was struck by how the “Chinese Jails” were described as atrocious and unfit for humans, but more so interested and appalled by the number of people the U.S. Government packed into a small space. The text describes more than 200 people shoved into a 100 square foot building on the docks of San Francisco. Reading this brought to mind a survey of other times the U.S. has limited the space of others, generally any person of color. The sardine-packed ships of enslaved peoples coming to the Colonies, the murder of people, culture, and history that was the Trail of Tears among countless other instances of theft of Native American land, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo when the U.S. sorta-kinda-but-mostly stole a third of Mexico, all atrocities and more so that we could limit the space of others for our selves. From the over-crowding of prisons—private, federal, immigration—to the attrition of land and people, it strikes me that the removal of liberty is tied to the removal or revocation of space.  

During our excursion to the border on Saturday I was particularly interested in the conversation between Ben and DT about frontier and la frontera, how the vernacular meaning of these words changes conversely when used in the American mindset versus the Mexican or Latinx. To quote DT’s website on the subject:

“ The literal meaning of the word ‘frontier’ is identical in both English and Spanish. However, its vernacular usage in each language is strikingly different. In the American psyche the frontier is an elusive destination; the locus of such national allegories as individuality, self-reliance and freedom. It is ‘The-Great-Out-There-Just-Beyond-the-Horizon.’ Conversely, ‘la frontera’ adheres to literal definitions—it is the border or borderline; it is a barrier.”

Ruminating on these ideas, I’m both interested and incensed with how the U.S. uses space as a political tool in many facets. Historically, the use of which is thrust upon the peoples of this country disguised as a benefit. However, this is more often harmful in particular to those we confiscated the space from. We have acted on this drive determined by a history of “manifest destiny” to the point where our understanding of language is altered by it. Obviously, in terms of political motive more land means more future revenue. Getting away from that and thinking back to the history of cramming human beings into smaller and smaller spaces or taking away the space they have already occupied, why do we do this? What is the importance of space? What does space mean for the self? How does space for a community or a people lend itself to agency and autonomy, liberty? I understand that these questions can be easily answered. But, I feel like revisiting them as we engage with these problematic spaces throughout the course is important for contextualizing ourselves respectively within those places.

-Abi C

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Eyes in the Sky: Being Watched in the Rural West

Rachel Monroe on the future of public space.

“What will the future of surveillance in cities look like? In her essay for The Future of Public Space, acclaimed journalist Rachel Monroe suggests that the best place to find an answer might actually be the rural American West. Reflecting on experiences in her adopted home of Marfa, Texas, Monroe reveals the breadth of technological surveillance far beyond the urban center.

The Future of Public Space is the second volume of SOM Thinkers, a series of books that poses provocative questions about design and architecture from perspectives outside its professional culture.”

Moving to the Southwestern United States I couldn’t help but interpret the wide open expanse of empty space as a source of freedom. I have since come to realize that we are living in one of the most heavily surveilled regions in North America. This essay was a good jumping off point for me to begin to learn about and explore the politics of a region could not be more dissimilar from where I grew up.

I have since been able to draw more parallels between the Latinx community of immigrants and refuges that have come to define this region and those of East African and Hmong ancestry that define Saint Paul and Minneapolis, MN. My relationship to these communities if defined by my own privilege. I cannot claim true understanding of these people’s experiences for I remain shocked to learn about the nuances of surveillance in the Southwest and every time I engage with materials on the politics of the Border I am met with ideas and concepts I don’t even have the language to address.

I come to this work required of me and this content which drives this field study as a total novice, ready to listen and seeking to understand in whatever way I can.

—David Baboila

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3. ANZALDÚA

La razón por la que vivo en Tijuana -y ahora en Estados Unidos- es a causa de esa crisis que describe Gloria en su libro, mi papá fue uno de esos hombres que durante la gran crisis de los noventa escuchó y creyó en el mito del norte. Se fue para Tijuana para hacer de su futuro algo más que el de un hombre desempleado en el centro del país. Ahora vive en otro lugar, donde trabaja de manera informal en lo que la suerte y su fuerza le permite. Me dice siempre que está bien, que no le falta nada, casi siempre es el papá-hombre el que me dice esas cosas. Hace unos meses por primera vez me dejó ver su tristeza, sus ganas de regresar. Me llamó desde un parque, hacia varias semanas que no había dejado su habitación por la pandemia, había ganado kilos por primera vez desde que se marchó de Tijuana, hace seis años.  Está mejor ahora, pronto viajará a ver mi abuela, a cargar sus fuerzas en su casa, con su madre, cerca de la familia.

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The reason I live in Tijuana - and now in the United States - is because of that crisis that Gloria describes in her book. My father was one of those men who, during the great crisis of the nineties, heard and believed in the myth of the north. He left for Tijuana to make his future more than that of an unemployed man in the center of the country. He now lives elsewhere, where he works informally as much as his luck and strength allows. He always tells me that he is well, that he doesn't need anything, it is almost always the father-man who tells me these things. A few months ago, for the first time, he let me see his melancholy, his desire to return. He called me from a park, it had been several weeks since he had left his room because of the pandemic, he had gained kilos for the first time since he left Tijuana, six years ago.  He is better now, soon he will travel to see my grandmother, to load his strength in his house, with his mother, close to the family.

Mariel Miranda // @mariiel.mira // MFA student // Tijuana-Tucson

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2. ANZALDÚA

-De su texto The homeland, Aztlán me gusta la combinación entre la poesía, la referencia a la cultura popular latinoamericana, su referencia a la política de la naturaleza, que  indómita se sobrepone a las delimitaciones geopolíticas. Me gusta el uso del primer plano de su propia memoria que utiliza como testimonio narrado en primera persona. Me gusta que su rastreo histórico de desplazamientos, migraciones, conquistas, guerras, linchamientos y ocupaciones de cuello blanco le permite decir/nos que la frontera física entre México y Estados Unidos no es un destino manifiesto sino una construcción geopolítica del horror y sociocultural que se conforma por múltiples intereses de orden territorial y económicos así como por complejas relaciones de poder desiguales de unos cuerpos legitimando su alcance sobre otros. Anzaldúa discute las relaciones contemporáneas de colonización a través de la extensión de formas materiales y simbólicas de dominación sobre el territorio mexicano, más allá de las fronteras, bajo las múltiples formas en las que se disfrazan hoy los intereses de la inversión privada sobre el territorio mexicano –maquiladoras, empresas privadas, mineras, narcotráfico, cuerpos: extraccionismos contemporáneos-.

Mariel Miranda // @mariiel.mira // MFA student // Tijuana-Tucson

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1. ANZALDÚA

-Son muchas las cosas que parecen que importan de ella, de su trayectoria, de su manera de pensar, de su manera de existir. En Anzaldúa, Lo frontera se lee en los temas que aborda en su trabajo, en la manera en la que escribe sobre ellos, en el uso de los dos lenguajes del colonizador –los usa mal y así triunfa- lo frontera se lee en su cuerpo, su clase social, identidad, sexualidad y construcción epistemológica. Habita la zona fronteriza entre México y Estados Unidos, es una mujer de familia campesina que labraron los campos americanos en los que ella misma participó, es chicana: ni mexicana ni americana, es lesbiana, su escritura no se ciñe a ningún campo en especifico. Su hibridez como sujeto es una hibridez que está presente en su trabajo, es una especie de puente que tiende entre su cuerpo y sus textos. Por ello además en su textos está siempre un eje central en la memoria, lo biográfico, lo vivencial, una escritura radicalmente distinta donde el cuerpo se debe poner en escena, una “corpoescritura” donde habla desde las tripas de la experiencia del dolor, el margen, la clase, la sexualidad, la potencia monstruosa de lo diferente. De allí y más que su pensamiento ha sido definido como una amenaza a los ordenes epistémicos.

Mariel Miranda // @mariiel.mira // MFA student // Tijuana-Tucson

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ART 504 Special Topics - Borders in Transition

The University of Arizona School of Art offers a seminar dealing with site based research and fieldwork in the visual arts. The fall 2020 iteration of the course addresses the borderlands of Mexico and the United States as a contingent space in a perpetual state of change. Course curriculum is based on the proposition that shared experience is an essential vehicle for the creation of new knowledge and understanding. Thus, the course engages relevant topics in situ. Group and individual work hinges upon on a series of excursions throughout the semester. Readings, discussion and production are tied to thematic frameworks and selected relevant locations. At the most general level, the course revolves around issues related to space, place, history(s) and mapping. As those topics necessarily imply, the granular detail will address a much more extensive and nuanced set of concerns related to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and serve as a starting point for individual student production. Follow us as our observations, insights and reflections accrue…

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The border is changing...

U.S. - Mexico Border, San Rafael Valley