ArtLab presents the performance Echoes from the Borderlands on February 16. This live sound-based performance will feature the award-winning author Valeria Luiselli accompanied by Leonardo Heiblum, Ricardo Giraldo, Lana Reeves, Maria Puente Flores and Maia Enrigue Luiselli.
Echoes from the Borderlands has been described as a sound piece that documents the histories of violence against land and bodies in the US-Mexico borderlands. It works like a sonic road trip that begins in the pounding waves of the Pacific Ocean in the Tijuana /San Diego border, and moves eastward throughout 24 hours –from sunrise to sunrise– until it reaches the wetlands of the Texan coast. Through the merging of 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, extractivism, nuclear testing, migration, femicide, vigilantism, human trafficking, and mass detention. However, these stories of plundering and exploitation are also met with stories of resilience and resistance.
This developmental performance will feature an excerpt of a 24-hour “sonic essay” that Luiselli has been developing in the studios of ArtLab this year. This performance is part of ArtsThursdays, a university-wide initiative supported by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA).
Echoes from the Borderlands was created by Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo, and Leonardo Heiblum. 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 work is being developed at Harvard ArtLab with support from the Dia Art Foundation.
