Screening and conversation with Mael Vizcarra and Sofia Dona
Friday, August 2 19:00
Cine Tonala, Av. Revolución 1317, Zona Centro, 22000 Tijuana, B.C.
La Línea/The Line—the border checkpoint between the U.S. and Mexico—is the most transited international land border in the world. It is here that hundreds of vendors earn a living selling goods and services on the Tijuana side to those waiting to cross into the U.S. ‘La Línea’ follows a few of these vendors in their day-to-day and records the ever-changing urban landscape of a city that is perpetually redefining itself against the backdrop of its reputation.
For ‘La puerta de las Californias’ a giant door was shipped across the Mexico/US border. It underwent official customs procedures. The process of the crossing was filmed and the documentation was formed into a three channel video installation. The work depicts production through misinterpretation; its title is referring to Tijuana ‘ ‘La puerta de México’, revealing a borderless economy shaped by architectural and construction companies from both sides of the fence.
The documentation has been realized in collaboration with:
Miguel Buenrostro, John Chapman, Marina Viruete, The Universidad de las Californias Internacional (UDCI)- department of Cinematography and the students: Bianca Arvizu, Xcaret Trejo, Pablo Franco, Enrique Castañeda Romero, Pamela Palacios and Karen Catalan
Mael Vizcarra is a filmmaker and anthropologist from Tijuana, Mexico. She has a doctorate in Visual Anthropology from the Institute of Liberal Arts of Emory University; she conducts research along the US-Mexico border. She is currently completing a postdoctoral stay in the Cultural Studies Master’s Program at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. Her film projects focus on culture and daily life on the border through ethnographic cinema. Her most recent documentary, La Línea, focuses on the everyday work of street vendors at the border checkpoint of San Ysidro in Tijuana.
Sofia Dona (Athens, 1981) is an architect and artist based in Munich and Athens. She studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and Public Art at the Bauhaus University of Weimar. She has been realizing projects in the field between architecture and art in various cities around the world, including Athens, Munich, Leipzig, Detroit, Los Angeles, Pisa and the border area of Tijuana and San Diego. She has exhibited in places such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST), the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildene Kunst (nGbk) and the Athens Biennale. She is awarded with the City of Munich 2018 Prize for Architecture and the Fulbright scholarship in 2015. As a member of the group “Errands”, she has participated in exhibitions such as the 7th Sao Paulo Biennial of Architecture (2007) and the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial (2013) and the exhibition Gardentopia in Matera (2019). In September 2019 she will have her solo exhibition ‚Voyageurs’ at the Kunstpavillon of Tiroler Künstler*schaft in Innsbruck.