Borderland feedback, a memorial for Gloria Andalzúa

The presentation delves into the creative process of the A/V performance, “Borderland feedback, a video memorial for Gloria Andalzúa,” which aimed to embody the literature of Andalzúa´s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987). The A/V  incantation* was enacted in Brooklyn, NY, at the Wavefield gallery basement, through close circuit video using a Mini-DV camera, the standard model used in 2004, when Gloria died. The public can only see the live video performance on the gallery’s top floor through a projection. The video performance starts with reading the poem “To Live in the Borderlands means you” (Borderlands/La Frontera p.194).

At the end of the reading, the public is invited to enter the basement, symbolizing the ‘underworld’ dimension, which, in the Zapotec culture, is the space where open communication with our ancestors and deceased can happen. In the basement, a modular synth sound performance processes vocal samples of the book readings found online. The sound is transmitted through several radios displayed in the space, where the audience can hold and quietly hear. The sound sequence ends with the following quote: “Anzaldúa spent most of her time typing in front of her computer; a few weeks before she died, part of that time was used to find cheap medicine on the internet. The death of famous women who are ‘women of color,’ in poverty or semi-poverty, is not such a rare occurrence. Audre Lorde also had no health insurance and no steady job; she died of cancer without specialized treatment. “These women of colour do not live many years,” says Ana Revilla, who calls this form  of “fatigue due to racial battle.”

This performance was presented at

-Wavefield Gallery, as part of the sound series WISE (Women Innovating Sound Experience), Brooklyn, New York, 2024. 

*Incantation is a concept adopted and practiced by Berlin based scholar, artist and media performer Tiara Roxanne, which she describes as follows:

* incantation (n.)

“art or act of enchanting by uttering magical words, with ceremonies supposed to have magical power; the formula of words or the ceremony employed,” late 14c., from Old French incantacion “spell, exorcism” (13c.), from Late Latin incantationem (nominative incantatio) “art of enchanting,” noun of action from past-participle stem of incantare “to bewitch, charm, cast a spell upon, chant magic over, sing spells”

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