A line in the sand | zoebaraton

A LINE IN THE SAND

Color video, 9'30, english voice-over and french subtitles. 2019.

I went to Mexico in February 2017. A new serious diplomatic crisis with the US erupted ; following the signing by Donald Trump of a decree aimed at "securing the United States' southern border through the construction of a wall to stem illegal immigration", which he wanted to make Mexico pay for.

I wanted to know more about the genesis of this wall between the two countries. So, I started a research that led me to read Mary E. Mendoza's essay: “Fencing the Line. Race, Environment, and the Changing Visual Landscape at the U.S.-Mexico Divide”. This essay explains the causes, development, and legacy of fence construction along boundary line from an environmental perspective. It argues that the construction of the border fence began in 1911, as an initiative to stop the movement of a cattle tick and, by 1945, grew into a multi-pronged effort to control the dynamic flow of human migration. The symbolic power of the border increased, creating and solidifying a highly contested and racialized landscape of power, difference, and exclusion by the end of the twentieth century.

Starting from this history of the wall - created "because" of an insect - I propose a kind of utopian solution to the resolution of its cross-border conflict, also inspired by an insect. I question the idea of border and boundary, by doing the apology of mobility and movement as a vital element to the survival of species. Every image used for the film, and shot in Mexico at the time of the research, stages this idea of constant movement; from both men and animals.