Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo & Leo Heiblum | Performance: Echoes from the Borderlands

This developmental performance will feature an excerpt of a 24-hour “sonic essay” that documents the histories of violence against land and bodies in the US-Mexico borderlands. Following the southern border of the United States, it 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.

Echoes from the Borderlands was created by Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo, and Leo Heiblum with support from the Dia Art Foundation. Valeria Luiselli is the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College. 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. Leo 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 event is co-sponsored by the Effron Center for the Study of America, Center for Migration and Development, Council of the Humanities, Department of Music, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.