PERFORMING THE BORDER | 1999

VIDEO ESSAY, 43 min.

 

A video essay set in the Mexican-US border town Ciudad Juarez, where the US industries assemble their electronic and digital equipment.  Performing the Border  looks at the border as both a discursive and a material space and discusses the sexualisation of the border region through gendered labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere. The serial killings in Juarez raise questions of the public/private and the entanglement between eroticized violence and mass technologies of the information society. Interviews, scripted voice over, quoted text on the screen, scenes and sounds recorded on site, as well as found footage are combined to give an insight into the gendered conditions inscribed in the border zone.

5' video excerpt from Performing the Border

 

Stills