What is the meaning of border when considered as a baseless line between realities? How should we interpret an arbitrary division which influences everyday life and experience?
Plaza Viva Tijuana is a transitory non-place next to the Mexican border which is the first place to be seen entering Mexico. It was built in the 90's as a commercial and touristic center with clubs, shops, pharmacies and dental clinics, designed on the basis of the idea that people from the US come for a visit. Today, the square is a ghost town, a walk-through-space, a bridge between the border and the center, a transit for people traveling to or from the US, daily, occasionally or permanently, officially or illegally.
The photographic work LA BORDER CURIOUS outlines the problems of the area that are undeniably linked to the border. The project suggests and opens up to an alternative vision for the social setting through the participation of a diverse range of people as well as student’s unions, migrant's associations and shelters. An abandoned area at the plaza was converted into a workshop space to organize activities and an exhibition discussing the representation of place and situation: documentary and fiction, the historicity of photography and truthfulness of images, the connection between the portrayer and the portrayed.
The networking through art allowed the creation of an exhibition center for different realities: content and container of stratified and semantically connected projects, both in the social and the cultural context. The result is not only a photographic narration but many collective actions which have also been documented, two of them are DALE DALE A LA BORDER! (Smash the Border!), a photographic performance, and QUIEN ERES? DE DONDE VIENES? A DONDE VAS? (Who are you? Where do you come from? Where are you going? ) a one-week archival action interviewing all the passers by in the space.