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‘BORDERLANDS’

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER IN ‘BORDERLANDS’
EXTENDED SEGMENT | ART21

Enter here to watch it directly on YouTube.

Art21 proudly presents this special extended segment as a complement to the “Borderlands” episode from the tenth season of the “Art in the Twenty-First Century” series. Edited to focus on a singular artist narrative, this film contains original material not included in the television broadcast.

Known for his large-scale, interactive installations, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer uses contemporary technologies like computerized surveillance, heart-rate sensors, and robotics to create participatory experiences and platforms for public participation and connection. The artist frequently works in and transforms public spaces, creating awe-inspiring, poetic, and critical installations, like ‘Voz Alta’: a massive megaphone system erected in a Mexico City plaza to commemorate the infamous Tlatelolco student massacre in 1968. Spurred by his Mexican heritage and the growing nationalism in the United States, Lozano-Hemmer embarks on his most ambitious project to date: ‘Border Tuner’, an enormous intercom system at the border between El Paso and Juárez that allows participants from both sides to speak and listen to each other via radio-enabled searchlights.

At his studio in Montreal, the artist works with a team of scientists, engineers, programmers, architects, and designers to develop the project; at the El Paso–Juárez border, he invites local artists and performers and members of the public to use ‘Border Tuner’ to listen to, share, and visualize their voices and stories. Highlighting the intimate, personal relations in a public space that is otherwise systematically dehumanizing, Lozano-Hemmer explains, “The most important role that art can play is that of making complexity visible. The usage of technology is inevitable; it’s up to the artist to use those technologies to create experiences that are intimate, connected, and critical.”

This extended segment includes Remote Pulse, 2019; an interactive installation consisting of two identical pulse-sensing stations that are interconnected over the internet. When a person places their hands on one station automatically the person on the other station feels their pulse, as the plates vibrate in sync with the heartbeat of the remote person, and vice versa. The piece was originally presented as part of Lozano-Hemmer’s Border Tuner’ installation across the US-Mexico border, with one station in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and the other in El Paso, Texas. This piece is part of ‘Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Latidos’ exhibition showing at < Arte Abierto > until December 13th, 2020 and will stay here permanently.

‘Borderlands’ premiered on October 2nd, 2020 on PBS. Enter here to watch the whole episode on PBS.