Border Tuner | Sintonizador Fronterizo documents Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s participatory art installation composed of powerful search-lights forming bridges of light that opened live channels for direct communication across the U.S.-Mexico border. At a time of intense anti-immigrant rhetoric, militarized surveillance, and nationalist violence, the artwork connected the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, creating a platform for people to converge along the border to speak to one another and listen across the divide.
This volume features extensive documentation of the artwork and its activation by tens of thousands of people who gathered to honor the interdependence of life in the borderlands. The book’s ten essays, presented in both English and Spanish, critically examine the legacy of Lozano-Hemmer’s project within the wider frame of artistic production along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Edited by Michael Nardone and Edgar Picazo Merino, with contributions by Kerry Doyle, Tatiana Flores, Juan Luis Longoria Granados, Robin Greeley, Andrea Blancas Beltrán and Léon de la Rosa Carillo, Sergio Raúl Arroyo, Willivaldo Delgadillo, Lucía Sanromán, and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
