English: Valeria Luiselli, Echoes from the Borderlands
At ArtLab, Valeria Luiselli collaborated with Leonardo Heiblum and Ricardo Giraldo to develop Echoes From The Borderlands, a sound-based artwork that documents the history of violence against land and bodies in the US-Mexico borderlands. By merging narratives, soundscapes, voices, melodies, rhythms, archival recordings, and sound constellations, the piece connects issues that have marked the borderlands, such as the genocide of native peoples, nuclear testing, migration, femicide, vigilantism, human trafficking, and mass detention. Echoes from the Borderlands is being developed at Harvard ArtLab with support from the Dia Art Foundation.
Valeria Luiselli is a Harvard College Visiting Professor of Ethnicity, Indigeneity, and Migration in the Department of English. Her writing has been translated into over 30 languages, and she became a MacArthur Fellow in 2020. Ricardo Giraldo is the director of the Podcast Division of La Corriente del Golfo, Diego Luna, and Gael Garcia Bernal’s production company. Leonardo Heiblum is an award-winning composer, producer, and sound artist who has composed music for over 50 feature films. He collaborates regularly with Philip Glass, Patti Smith, and musicians from all over the world, mixing classical and indigenous instruments with field recordings. This project is part of Valeria Luiselli’s faculty artist residency (2022-24).
Echoes from the Borderlands was performed at ArtLab as an ArtsThursday event in February 2023.