[rustling] - [speaking Spanish] [soft music] - Many of my works
involve this process of taking a portrait
of a participant, for example, like their face, or their fingerprint,
or their heartbeat. And then making it into a landscape because it's beautiful to see your
heartbeat, but it's more beautiful
to see it in relationship
to all this others. From the very beginning
of my practice, I worked with technology. When we're using this
technology, it's very easy
to seduce people and have this kind of mesmerized
hallucination. But the reality
is that we must reuse those same technologies
to create critical platforms where difficult questions
are asked. [soft music] We're living
in a society where these technologies
are inescapable. Across the U.S.-Mexico border, you see surveillance systems
and the searchlights of the Border Patrol choppers
looking for migrants. I'm a Mexican immigrant
in Canada, but when I would hear the Trump administration talk about Mexicans being rapists, using Mexicans
as this escape valve for all this hatred, you feel that;
you feel that personally. I felt, "Okay,
this is time to come up with a work that can make
a contribution in the area." - I like to take people
up to this lookout because it's one
of the places where you can really
get a sense of how the two cities
fit together. So should we get out?
Have a look around? - Yeah. Let's do it. - Juarez and El Paso together
make up the largest bi-national
metropolis in the Western Hemisphere. So that's the border
that you see there. It's this big, wide stretch,
like, running through. And from here, you can see
our site also. So you can see
Bowie High School, and just across the trees are-
are the Chamizal, which was a bi-national park at
one point. It's a particularly integrated
place. More than 65% of the people
in both cities have immediate family
in the other cities, so 65%. - I love when you have a pre-established notion of what you're gonna see
and it's wrong. I learned that you can't make an artwork
about the wall. People there
are sick of the wall. They want to
talk about the ways in which the two societies
interpenetrate. [light music] To create an artwork
for listening is really what
the project became. Probably...pause. - Oh, that's cool. - The work that I'm doing now,
"Border Tuner," which present this continuous
symbolic bridge across El Paso
and Ciudad Juarez using searchlights not to look for individuals, but rather to look for relationships between
individuals. I work a lot with light
to take over public space. As an artist, our challenge is to interrupt
the normal ways that the city is becoming
homogeneous. The idea
is to use the language of technology and spectacle and scale to bring people
into the area, but once they're in the area, give them something
completely different. Create eccentric interactions, moments where it is not
business as usual, something has happened that
invites you to talk to others and to establish
relationships anew. So let me ask you this. My practice is not me standing in front of a canvas
getting inspired. It's really about liaising with specialists
in different fields, putting that together. Half of us are chemists
or scientists or engineers
or programmers. The other half are architects,
designers, artists, composers. I love the words "factory"
and "laboratory" to describe my studio. Often, we're working
with fundamental science and then something comes up from those experiments
that can lead to a piece. And that's what we're doing
in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Now speak without leaning. - Hi, this is a test. - Okay, now lean. - And now it sounds better. - His microphone... - Creating a platform
for people to self-represent,
for their voice to be visible, is a fundamental part of what
I'm doing politically. [muffled shouting, gunshots] "Voz Alta" was a work
in Mexico City to commemorate
the 40th anniversary of the massacre of students
in Tlatelolco Plaza. We set up a megaphone that converted people's voices
into light. So these very powerful
searchlights would come flashing to the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. [somber music] [people speaking Spanish] - Well, that's what we had
before, so 0.001. - Whoa. So go for 2.1. Whereas "Voz Alta" was more about speaking to the heavens, "Border Tuner" is about
speaking to another person, establishing
those new connections to create community. [soft music] [woman singing in Spanish] - See, we're so close. Eso es Juárez - All that is Juárez, yeah. Since the '70s
that I was born, totally everything
has changed here in El Paso, Juarez. We used to come and go. I don't know
how many times a day, and we didn't have no ID, no paper, nada. Now I don't even go to Juarez. I'm scared to go to Juarez. When I found out about
"Border Tuner," I was like,
"I need to be heard." Since age seven,
I was experiencing abuse mentally and physically. I think wrestling
was my escape. I became the first officially gay wrestler
to be a world champion. This is "Border Tuner."
Look. That's station 2, and we'll be in station 1. See, this is the one where I'll
be speaking. This is to give voice to the ones that can't
have a voice. This is all part of our healing
process, I think. - [speaking Spanish] - Jeffrey, you can run the streaming interface
in here, is that true? - I can run it over here.
Yeah. - Oh this is really good then.
Live stream. - So I can see here all of the different attributes
of that station, whether I need to ignite the light or things like that. - Okay. - [speaking Spanish] - Hey, Jeffrey, for fun, let's start the lights early. - Going into performance mode. - Here we go. Lights up. Boom. - Whoa. - Whoa!
- Whoa. - My parents were nightclub
owners in Mexico City, so I grew up in the light
of the nightclub, surrounded by musicians,
by dancers, by artists. Good artwork is a little bit
like a club. You can bring the drinks, and put great music, and good ambiance,
but it is not until the people show up
that the party begins. - Thanks for joining us. [speaking Spanish] Starting now, the mikes are interactive, so anyone who wants to try
them out, come on in. - You wanna try moving
the lights? All the way over. There--you can stop right there
and say, "Hello." - Hello. Hola. - [speaking Spanish] [both speaking Spanish] [people speaking Spanish] - Juarez has gone through a lot of difficult times
for the longest time. We have so many migrants
waiting on the border, femicide,
narco violence. People in Juarez are, like, always recovering
from something. And their communities
and their art is just like a--a way of surviving. I've learned to compare people here like desert plants. They live in the harshest
conditions, but once they bloom, they're one of the most
beautiful plants. We're super resilient. [both speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] - Sometimes this kind
of social geopolitical issue is something that's very
abstracted, but when you can hear
the individual voices, when you can connect
one to one, it becomes real,
it becomes tangible. - Party to people, are you coming to party? Guys, there's Mexicans
trying to communicate. You must touch this. So you put your hands on it. The one on the right
is the Mexican heartbeat. The one on the left
is the one for me. And what I feel in my hands
is the heartbeat of the person
on the other side. Quick, put your hands. So now you feel their
heartbeat, and they feel yours. Perhaps the most important
role that art can play is that of making complexity
visible. You can scale it up, you can size it up
to make it evident. If the job of nationalist
administrations is to try to simplify
the narratives, we as artists
need to intervene and complicate things to show the dynamics
and the interrelations that take place
between the two sides. [soft music]
