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PUBLIC CALL FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY ART
THE WALL BETWEEN US: Re-imagining Borders Score
1. Find a photo of the international border nearest you.
2. Make art in response to the question: What you would like to see happen at the border in service of healing and/or intercultural exchange? Consider a child's perspective as you make a collage, painting, dance, event, or poetry in service of future generations.
3. Send your artwork, name, and a short bio of who you are to us to dancemonks@dancemonks.com
We will choose art as part of an international online gallery.
THE WALL BETWEEN US: Re-imagining Borders (2023)
Directors: Mirah Kllc Moriarty and Rodrigo Esteva
Performers: Mirah, Rodrigo, and caring people worldwide with powerful imaginations
We are creating an international, intergenerational movement and you are invited to join us! DANCE MONKS invites people worldwide with powerful imaginations to join us on January 28, 2023 to re-imagine borders and plant seeds of possibility.
The event's timing is in memory of Carmelita Torres, a young girl who, at 17 years old, stood for dignity and refused to be deloused with chemicals before work on January 28, 1917, when crossing into El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The project brings attention to the pain and division that currently resides as THE WALL BETWEEN US towards justice, healing, friendship, interracial/intercultural love, exchange, and healing. The project is also created in solidarity with all of the 50 women who braided their hair together in a potent stance of unity along the US-Mexico Border in 2017 in response to US family separation policies.
The Wall Between US was first conceived as El Otro Lado: The Other Side/of the border in 2005 and commissioned by the Summer Language Institute of Middlebury College. The love duet between Mirah (b. in the United States) and Rodrigo Esteva (b. in Mexico) was performed to recordings from a series of interviews (in Spanish and English) with people living on the Mexican side of the border and their vision of "the other side," a common phrase used to describe the US as a distant place. The interviews included firsthand memories of racial prejudice, childhood imaginings, and stories.
DANCE MONKS reconstructed the duet in 2017 in the context of Trump-era xenophobic politics for D.I.R.T Fest in San Francisco. The latter brought cross-cultural love to the forefront in response to the ongoing racism in immigration politics that has impacted their family as well as grandparents, parents, and children for generations. The sound of the performance was a collection of stories of families living on either side of the US/Mexico border.
Performed at D.I.R.T Fest, SF (2017) and Commissioned by the Summer Language Institute of Middlebury College, VT (2005)
BORDER ARTISTS TRANSFORM WHAT IS POSSIBLE:
PEDRO REYES: PALAS POR PISTOLAS
Artist, PEDRO REYES (MX), collected 1,527 guns which were melted down to create shovels that, in turn, were used to plant trees in urban areas affected by violence
http://urbanoproject.org/palas-por-pistolasshovels-for-guns
BRAIDING SOLIDARITY PROJECT:
A project where women from both sides of the US/Mexican border braided their hair in unity and solidarity
https://remezcla.com/culture/us-mexico-border-braid-solidarity/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJECRD-b_DU&t=25s
ANA TERESA FERNANDEZ: BORRANDO LA FRONTERA/ ERASING THE BORDER
Artist, Ana Teresa Fernandez, painted the border sky blue in an effort to symbolically erase the border
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/04/erasing-the-border/477891/
RELATED RESEARCH:
LOVE HAS NO BORDER: GETTING MARRIED AT THE US/MEXICO BORDER'S DOOR OF HOPE
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42043063
US BORDER FAMILY SEPARATION POLICIES:
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/03/23/family-separation-timeline
THE BATH RIOTS HISTORY:
https://www.npr.org/2006/01/28/5176177/the-bath-riots-indignity-along-the-mexican-border
CANTINFLAS CRUZANDO LA FRONTERA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOb4JxMIeQM
Photo (above): 50 women from Texas and Mexico protested at the international pedestrian bridge that connects El Paso and Juarez. By braiding their hair together, they made a statement that the fates of the United States and Mexico are inextricably linked. Women of the Boundless Across Borders organization got their hair braided during a binational protest called Braiding Borders on Jan. 20, 2017. (Photo: Jose Luis Gonzalez)
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