Border Cameo
2016 -
Digital Video Archive, Duration variable
A video supercut compiling representations of the border-crossing from major films and television shows, as well as representations gathered from found home videos and informational/instructional films.
Throughout its many cameos, the crossing (as site and process) is depicted as a stage for a dramatic and/or comical game of cat and mouse, a contrived constant pursuit, which revolves around near captures and repeated escapes.
At the same time, the border becomes a tourist attraction for visitors to the city of Tijuana who document it in their home videos as an unfamiliar site and alien experience.
The resulting juxtaposition between these sources -- oscillating between drama and dullness, myth and anecdote, history and memory, fantasy and everyday experience -- contends with the possibility that the border is never just one or the other, but both simultaneously.
The cut below from this ongoing archival project was shown on the final weekend of the screening series Escalas Fronterizas, at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, on a billboard atop the Mercado de Artesanías de la Línea for cars waiting in line to cross the border.