Memorycemetery

A Border Is…

BORDER CULTURE IS A polysemantic term.
Stepping outside of one´s culture is equivalent
to walking outside of the law.
Border culture means boycott, complot, ilegalidad,
clandestinidad, contrabando, transgresión,
desobediencia binacional; en otras palabras,
to smuggle dangeros poetry and utopian visions
from one culture to another, desde allá, hasta acá.
But it also means to maintain one´s dignity outside the law.
But it also means hybrid art forms for new contents
in gestation: spray mural, techno-altar, poetryintongues,
audiograffity, punkarachi, videocorrido, antibolero, antitodo:
art world: en otras palabras y tierras, an art against the
monolingües, police´s monoculture, tapados, nacionalistas,
esteticistas en extinción…
But it also means to be fluid in English, Spanish, Spanglish and Ingleñol. Cause Spanglish is the language of border diplomacy.
But it also means transcultural friendship and
collaboration among races, sexes, and generations.
But it also means to practice creative appropriation,
Expropriation and subversion of dominant cultural forms.
But it also means a new cartography; a brand new map
To host the new project; the democratisation of the East;
the socialisation of the West; the ThirdWorldisation of the North and the FirstWorldisation of the South.
But it also means a multiplicity of voices away from the center, different geo-cultural relations among more culturally akin regions: Your home and mine, digamos, a new internationalism postcentris.
But it also means regresar y volver a partir: to return and
depart once again. Cause border culture is an experience
and to arrive is just an illusion.
But it also means a new terminology for new
Hybrid identities, constantly metamorphosing:
Sudaca, hispanic, mestizaje, social thinker, not bohemian-accionista, performer, intercultural and postpostmodern.
But it also means to develop new models to
interpret the world-in-crisis, the only world we know.
But it also means to push the borders of countries
and languages or, better said, to find new languages
to express the fluctuating borders.
But it also means experimenting with the fringes between art
and society, legalidad and ilegality, English and Español,
male and female, North and South, self and other
and subverting these relationships.
But it also means to speak from the subconsciente,
desde acá, desde el medio. The border is the juction not the edge and monoculturalism has been expelled from the margins.
But it also means grassroots, raíces, not government´s
censorship, for censorship as racism is the opposite of border culture.
But it also means to analyse critically all that lies on
the current table of devates; multiculturalism, the latino, ethic-ethnic art, even border art.
But it also means to question and transgress border culture.
What today is powerful and necessary, tomorrow is arcane and ridiculous; what today is border culture, tomorrow is institutional art, never vice versa.
But it also means to escape the current co-optation
of border culture.
But it also means to look at the past and the future at the same time. 1492 was the beginning of a genocidal era.
Soon, a new internationalism will have to gravitate around
our spinal cord.
Not just Europe, not just the North, not just white,
not only you, compañero compañerita del otro lado
de la frontera, el lenguaje y el océano.

Silvia

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