Cosmonaut
In 2007 Felipe Zuñiga staged a performance at the border crossing between Mexico and the United States. He was inspired by a mural of a ’space landscape’ painted on the highway wall as you approach by car the US border in Tijuana. Wearing a space suit he walks toward the border as an explorer seeking the land of the unknown. With the displacement of the suit, he confronts ideas of hostile and unliveable territories that might await him on the other side.
The video work adds other levels to the performance and crosses three coordinates in space and time. Firstly, the representation seeking of new lands in front of the mural; second, the actual border crossing in Tijuana, and third, the mediated space of a television news show imposing another reading to the performance afterwards. (6 minutes in loop.)
Queer Geography Tijuana
The body image – present and absent – in the social space where the emergence of elusive identities troubles and plays with traditional bionomic gener labels.
The content of the interviews with Pan, Cris and Abby in juxtaposition with the visual documentation echoes the mobility of the region Tijuana-San Diego where even traditional or stereotypical rolls and values are put into question due to the cultural friction of bodies and stories coming back and forward, gaining and losing, trading signifiers in each crossing.
Spanish with English subtitles. 2007