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Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times pp 177–201Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Sustainable Practices on the US–Mexico Border: inSITE_05, Intervention, and Precarious Communities

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Part of the book series: Contemporary Performance InterActions ((CPI))

Abstract

In 2005, the fifth and final iteration of inSITE took place. inSITE_05 included a number of social practice works, including Mark Bradford’s Maleteros, a project that helped the unofficial porters brand themselves, SIMPARCH’s Dirty Water Initiative, a ‘fountain’ that recycled dirty water, and Judy Werthein’s Brinco, border crossing shoes that were given to workers trying to cross the border. In this chapter, I propose to return to these interventions in order to understand how a past art event might continue to engage with the needs of the community long after the art tourists have gone home and the organization has closed up shop. Questions that I will address in this chapter include what was and what was not at stake in these projects? How were they situated in relationship to the ongoing activist work that had taken place in that area, including the creation of Chicano Park under the five interstate and the agitprop performances of the Border Arts Workshop? And finally, how can these projects be read today in the wake of global popular uprising and anti-capitalist sentiments?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 3.

  2. 2.

    Ila Nicole Sheren, Portable Borders: Performance Art and Politics on the U.S. Frontera since 1984 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press), 99–100.

  3. 3.

    The Chicano Art Movement was formed in opposition to a proposed substation and parking lot for the Highway patrol that was slated for the concrete wasteland under the intersection of Interstate 5 and the Coronado Bridge, an intersection that had been formed only at the expense of Barrio Logan, a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood in San Diego. Enraged that the city had reneged on a promised park, the residents of Barrio Logan—along with radicalized students from San Diego State University—occupied the area for twelve days and began construction on what is presently known as Chicano Park, a grassy area under the pylons that is renowned for its Chicano murals, stylistically reminiscent of the Mexican Muralists with nationalistic subjects that ranged from pre-Columbian symbols to heroes of the Mexican revolution and the Chicano Resistance Movement. Later that same year, the artist group Los Toltecas en Aztlán, led by Salvador Torres, were successful in getting the city of San Diego to grant them a building for a Chicano center in Balboa Park. From 1971 to 1983, an abandoned concrete water tank at the edge of Balboa Park was painted over with murals that echoed the pylon murals at Chicano Park both thematically and stylistically. See Jo-Anne Berelowitz, ‘Border Art Since 1965,’ in Postborder City, ed. Michael Dear and Gustavo Leclerc (New York: Routledge, 2003); Jo-Anne Berelowitz, ‘The Spaces of Home in Chicano and Latino Representations of the San Diego–Tijuana borderlands (1968–2002),’ Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 23, no. 3 (June 2005): 323–350; and on the website http://www.chicanoparksandiego.com/.

  4. 4.

    BAW/TAF was founded in 1984 by David Avalos, who would later participate in inSITE_97. Avalos brought together a group of artists and scholars to form the BAW/TAF. Unlike the earlier Los Toltecas en Aztlán, whose members were local and Mexican American, the membership of BAW/TAF was much more heterogeneous and eclectic, comprised of academics, artists, workers, and dancers that hailed from both sides of the border. Gómez-Peña, along with his then wife Emily Hicks, was a central player in the theorization of the border as a concept and mode of consciousness rather than a literal geographic site. Under the theoretical guidance of Hicks and Gómez-Peña, the BAW/TAF articulated an artistic subjectivity based on the idea of the border subject as a bilingual postmodern trickster who moved between identities, countries, and nationalities. By 1989, the BAW/TAF had achieved international recognition with an invitation to participate in the Venice Biennial. For more information on BAW/TAF , see Berelowitz, ‘Border Art Since 1965’; Sheren, Portable Borders.

  5. 5.

    See Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette, eds. The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (North Adams, MA: MASS MoCA Publications and Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004). Although the MASS MoCA exhibition took place the year prior to inSITE_05 and the catalogue for inSITE_05 was not published until 2006, the curatorial essays, including that by Sánchez, reference relational aesthetics rather than interventionism (although all of the catalogue writers conceptualized the work for inSITE as ‘intervening’ in public life), social practice, or, in Sholette’s terminology, ‘dark matter.’

  6. 6.

    In the opening paragraphs of his catalogue essay, Sánchez stressed that he and the curatorial team decided to eschew the idea of the border region as a ‘chic’ public platform in favor of subtle interventions and immersions into the flow of public life. Osvaldo Sánchez, ‘Fading Tracers,’ in inSITE_05: [Situational] Public, ed. Osvaldo Sánchez and Donna Conwell (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 2006), 40–41.

  7. 7.

    Osvaldo Sánchez, ‘Rito de paso/Rite of Passage,’ in Fugitives sites: inSITE 2000–2001 new contemporary art projects for San Diego–Tijuana, ed. Osvaldo Sánchez and Cecilia Garza (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 2002), 172.

  8. 8.

    Sánchez, ‘Fading Tracers,’ 41.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    Sally Yard, ‘A Dynamic Equilibrium: In Pursuit of Public Terrain,’ in inSITE_05: A Dynamic Equilibrium: In Pursuit of Public Terrain, ed. Sally Yard (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 2007), 13.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Teddy Cruz, ‘Border Postcards: Chronicles from the Edge,’ inSITE_05: A Dynamic Equilibrium, 69.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 72.

  16. 16.

    Shuddhabrata Sengupta, ‘Liminal,’ in inSITE_05: Conversations: Compilation: Dialogues 1–2: Liminal Zones, Coursing Flows, Aliens, Denizens, Cosmopolitans, ed. Sally Yard (San Diego: inSITE_05, 2004), 15.

  17. 17.

    Osvaldo Sánchez et al., inSITE_05: Art Practices in the Public Domain San Diego Tijuana (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 2005), 6.

  18. 18.

    George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 337. Yúdice’s chapter on inSITE, ‘Producing the Cultural Economy: The Collaborative Art of inSITE’ was excerpted in inSITE 2000–2001: Fugitive Sites, 78–84.

  19. 19.

    Unless otherwise indicated, most of the information in this paragraph is taken from SIMPARCH’s web site, http://www.simparch.org.

  20. 20.

    SIMPARCH, ‘Dirty Water Initiative,’ http://www.simparch.org/dirty-water-initiative/.

  21. 21.

    Cruz, ‘Border Postcards: Chronicles from the Edge,’ 87.

  22. 22.

    The information for this chronology is found in the SIMPARCH chronology that is part of ‘Unfolding Process: Summaries of Key Moments during the Projects’ Development,’ in inSITE_05: [Situational] Public, 6.

  23. 23.

    SIMPARCH, ‘Hydromancy,’ accessed January 21, 2018. http://www.simparch.org/hydromancy/.

  24. 24.

    Mark Bradford, ‘Proposal,’ 2004, Box 182, inSITE Archive ca. 1992–2006 MSS 0707.

  25. 25.

    Donna Conwell, ‘Maleteros/Mark Bradford,’ inSITE: Art Practices in the Public Domain (2005), n.p.

  26. 26.

    Kellie Jones, ‘Just Across the Way,’ inSITE_05: [Situational] Public, 227.

  27. 27.

    Conwell, ‘Maleteros/Mark Bradford,’ n.p.

  28. 28.

    Sánchez, et al., ‘Mark Bradford/Maleteros,’ inSITE_05: [Situational] Public, 220.

  29. 29.

    Christopher Bedford, ed., Mark Bradford (Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).

  30. 30.

    Amy Isackson, ‘State-of-the-Art Shoes Aid Migrants: The World Programme, San Diego,’ BBC News, November 17, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4445342.stm.

  31. 31.

    Sánchez, et al., ‘Unfolding Process: Judi Werthein,’ inSITE_05: [Situational] Public, 63.

  32. 32.

    María Fernanda Cartagena, ‘Interview with Judi Werthein,’ LatinArt.com , December 1, 2005.

  33. 33.

    Donna Conwell, ‘Email to Judi Werthein,’ May 31, 2005, Box 201, inSITE Archive.

  34. 34.

    Judi Werthein, ‘Email to Donna Conwell,’ June 7, 2005, Box 201, inSITE Archive.

  35. 35.

    Information about Brinco Shoe, n.d., Box 201, inSITE Archive.

  36. 36.

    Cartagena, ‘Interview with Judi Werthein.’

  37. 37.

    Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso Books, 2012), Kindle edition.

  38. 38.

    Sheren, Portable Borders. Kindle Edition.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    inSITE is usually considered to be a biennial or triennial—the designation is murky because there were two years between 1992 and 1994, three years between 1994 and 1997, three years again between 1997 and 2001, and then technically three years between 2001 and 2005, since inSITE_05 began in 2004 with panels and residencies. Jens Hoffmann, in Showtime: The Fifty Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (New York: D.A.P, 2014), placed inSITE in the category of ‘Beyond the White Cube,’ and not in Biennials. On the other hand, Royce W. Smith, writing for XTRA, included inSITE in a discussion of contemporary biennials, although he acknowledged that inSITE was considerably different than a standard biennial. See Smith, ‘A Crisis of Supersized Proportions (or Why the Next Great Art Biennial Should Not Be Curated by a Super Platinum Frequent Flyer),’ XTRA 13, no. 2 (Fall 2010). http://x-traonline.org/article/a-crisis-of-super-sized-proportions-or-why-the-next-great-art-biennial-should-not-be-curated-by-an-uber-platinum-frequent-flyer/.

  41. 41.

    ‘6th edition of inSITE,’ listserv email from e-flux, March 1, 2015.

  42. 42.

    inSITE/Casa Galina, accessed February 3, 2018. http://inSITE.org.mx/wp/en/.

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Claire Voon, ‘Wielding Instruments Like Weapons, A Marching Band Sweeps Through Mexico City,’ Hyperallergic, July 27, 2017. https://hyperallergic.com/391598/wielding-instruments-like-weapons-a-marching-band-sweeps-through-mexico-city/.

  45. 45.

    Ulf Rollof and Michael Schnorr, ‘Abandonado II,’ inSITE94 Guide (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 1994), 158–159.

  46. 46.

    Accessed February 3, 2018. http://valeskasoares.net/work/untitled-from-picturing-paradise/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Art + Design, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Jennie Klein

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  1. Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Natalie Alvarez

  2. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Claudette Lauzon

  3. Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Keren Zaiontz

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Klein, J. (2019). Sustainable Practices on the US–Mexico Border: inSITE_05, Intervention, and Precarious Communities. In: Alvarez, N., Lauzon, C., Zaiontz, K. (eds) Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11557-9_8

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