Mexico Now Festival: Echoes from the Borderlands

Presented with NYU Center Latin American & Caribbean Studies

Sonic Essay – Free with RSVP

Acclaimed author Valeria Luiselli, composer Leonardo Heilblum and multimedia artist Ricardo Giraldo will perform an excerpt (one-hour-long sonic essay) from Echoes from the Borderlands, an experimental work that documents the histories of violence and resistance against land and bodies in the US-Mexico borderlands. This 24-hours-long work in progress project – representing the driving time along the border from San Diego to the Texas Gulf Coast – interweaves a rich tapestry of soundscapes, music, poetry, essays, interviews, and archival material into a unique work connecting issues that have marked the borderlands, such as the genocide of native peoples, nuclear testing, migration, femicide, vigilantism, human trafficking, and mass detention. One-hour-long sonic essays excerpted from Echoes from the Borderlands have also been presented at Joe’s Pub, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkley, among others. Echoes from The Borderlands is supported in part by Dia Art Foundation.

Valeria Luiselli Is an acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of Sidewalks, Faces in the Crowd, The Story of My Teeth, and Tell Me How It Ends (An Essay in Forty Questions). Her most recent novel, Lost Children Archive was an international critical and commercial success that landed on The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2019, won the Rathbone Folio Prize 2020, the Dublin Award 2021, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was a nominee for both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize. In 2019, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for “challenging conventional notions of authorship in fiction, essays, and inventive hybrids of the two that pose profound questions about the various ways we piece together stories and document the lives of others.” She is a professor at Bard College. Leonardo Heilblum 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. Ricardo Giraldo works in sound, film promotion, contemporary classical music, audiovisual media, and exhibit design. He is the director of the Podcast Division of La Corriente del Golfo, Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal’s production company.

This presentation is part of Mexico Now Festival (MXNOW), celebrating its 20th anniversary from November 20 to 24 with five nights of music, photography, film, multimedia art, and a community celebration. Events are free to attend with an RSVP and will take place at the festival’s new hub for 2024: Chelsea Factory. Over the past two decades, MXNOW has provided a pivotal pipeline connecting the arts and cultural communities of Mexico and the United States. The festival has presented over 500 artists to audiences of tens of thousands of New Yorkers partnering with over 150 venues and cultural institutions throughout the five boroughs. Founded in 2004 by award-winning curator and producer Claudia Norman of CN Management, MXNOW is New York City’s first and only independent festival spotlighting contemporary Mexican art and culture. To this day, Ms. Norman remains the only major Mexican-born festival director in New York City. Her continuing goal is to share the rich ancient traditions and vital new ideas emerging in Mexico’s vibrant arts scene by showcasing Mexican and Mexican-American creators alongside US artists who embrace Mexican culture.