TJ SD EMDR (2010)
Wall-mounted giclée print with flashing LED lights
TJ/SD-EMDR is a simple, playful gesture aimed at the relief of trauma associated with the border that separates the United States and Mexico. As a Tijuana/San Diego local, I have chosen this particular region of the border as the focus for this project.
The border is a source of great trauma for many of us who live in its general proximity. Many of us long to be on the other side, but we are forcefully kept out. Many of us want to close down the border, and keep those on the other side out. Many of us want to open-up the border and let everyone come and go as they please. Many of us want to open the border, so we can get cheap labor for our businesses. Many of us spend our free time patrolling one side and trying to keep those on the other side from getting through. Many of us worry that those on the other side will steal our jobs if they cross. Many of us have died trying to cross. Many of us are afraid of the other side. Many of us want to forget that the border exists, but we unfortunately we cannot. Anyway you look at it, the border is a traumatic physical and psychological feature in the landscape and minds of many of us.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is kind of psychotherapy for dealing with trauma. Generally, EMDR treatments involve the use of an approach called “bilateral eye movement”. The patient moves his or her eyes back and forth (from right to left) while he/she holds the thought of a traumatic event in his or her mind. Although doctors and neurologists are unsure exactly how this works, they attribute this back and forth eye motion to a furthering of memory processing of the trauma. After completing a series of these bilateral eye movement exercises with a psychologist, the patient generally experiences changes in memories that make the trauma less severe. Through EMDR patients tend to overcome some of the fear and anxiety associated with the trauma.
For this project, I want to combine these two topics in order to create an object that is at first curious and beautiful, but can also serve as a reminder of the border itself and all of the trauma that surrounds it.
The physical object is a framed, high-quality satellite image of the Tijuana/San Diego border region, but it turned on its side so that South is left and North is right. Two, blue, flashing LED lights are inserted into the picture plane. One is in Tijuana (left) one is in San Diego (right). By shifting one's eyes from the flashing Tijuana light to the San Diego light and back and forth a number of times, one can obtain precisely the type of bilateral eye movements used by EMDR psychologists. The traumatic border region is also right there in front of the patient/viewer to observe.
These two themes, Tijuana and EMDR, had been entangled in my life and work. I was living in Tijuana on and off since June 2009, and I also being treated by a psychologist in San Diego for post traumatic stress disorder related to a number of severe panic attacks. Sometimes I had these panic attacks while in the line crossing into the United States. This made security guards very nervous and aware of my presence. I was pulled into Secondary Inspection four times in one past year. But my panic attacks are certainly nothing significant when it is compared to other types of border traumas.
Living in Tijuana, I realized the privilege of being a US Citizen more than I ever thought possible. Meeting smart, educated, middle-class Mexican citizens who are barred from crossing into the US, while I float back and forth across the border, is an uncomfortable situation. My best friend, who graduated from the University of California, San Diego with an MFA in Visual Arts and works at the Centro Cultural Tijuana, the major museum and cultural center in Tijuana, is no longer allowed in the United States because he doesn't look good enough on paper and is considered a flight risk. But again, the traumas get much worse.
On September 23rd, for the first time in nearly 50 years, the San Ysidro border crossing was shut down entirely after three vans (carrying 74 people!) tried to barge their way through the gates into San Diego--during rush hour traffic at 3:30pm. What chance did they possibly have of success? Officers fired shots immediately on the vans. Most were arrested and wounded by both gunshots and erratic driving while packed 23-deep into the vehicle, some died of gunshot wounds, a few fled back into Tijuana.
The border is the ultimate quandary. What is the right thing to say, do, know about it? What are the right government policies for it? What can be done to make it less traumatic? I am currently working on a feature-length documentary video covering some of these topics, and it is centered on other non-Hispanic people living in Tijuana, and the reasons they have for living here. I explore these ideas in depth and in a severe spot light within my documentary work, but this project I image to be a lighter, perhaps even silly sort of gesture.
I travel back and forth between San Diego to Tijuana, and I travel back and forth between documentary video and installation art. I imagine myself, like so many countless others who participate in this cross-border life, traveling back and forth, like the little blue LED lights in this piece.