TO THE RYTHM OF
THE SWING
TIJUANA, MEXICO & SAN DIEGO, US BORDER • 2012
Between the cities of Tijuana and San Diego there is a metal wall belonging to the government of the United States: a zone of North American national security. Mexican performer Rocio Boliver swung over the border between Mexico and the USA using a swing attached to a crane, watched closely by an armed group of United States mounted police.
“I thought while swinging, – if the police are in contact, what will they communicate to the command base? “Someone is crossing the border now…, not now…, now…, not now…, now”… For a moment I was afraid that they could shoot me, but being up there I felt totally free and happy!”
Boliver covered her face with a long white veil, leaving a blank canvas for all the faces of those who have been killed while trying to cross the border. Boliver stood on the swing as a demonstration of standing on American soil. No one had thought about the possibility that, in the manner of a children’s game, the law could be broken ironically. To complete the action, Boliver lowered her pants and showed her buttocks in a mocking manner, a universal and ancient insult.
READ MORE ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE
CROSS-BORDER, OVER-BORDER AND DE-BORDER.
THE ART OF PERFORMANCE ON THE USA-MEXICO BORDER.
"Performative transbordering, as a challenge to the forms of control imposed by border crossings through the use of the body as a playful act, as an expression of difference and as abjection.
Performative cross-border on the border between Mexico and the United States. The performance presented at the Low Lives: Occupy! developed between San Diego and Tijuana.
In the action, we observe how Rocio Boliver begins her work walking accompanied by some mariachis who sing a narcocorrido that repeats "life is a swing". After the tour, the artist arrives at the border limit where there are metal chains installed on a crane that support a swing, which is climbed and balanced, thus transgressing the border limits.
During the fifteen minutes that the performance lasts, Rocio Boliver tirelessly crosses the border without ever touching American soil until, at the end of the performance, she drops her pants to show her buttocks to the migra.
The political gesture lies in the use of the body as a cross-border element that, beyond legal regulations, crosses the border through the air and, therefore, without leaving a trace, in its sway, of its passage through the American side. Despite occupying American airspace, she cannot be detained by immigration because she has not touched the ground with her body."
Miguel Alfonso Bouhaben and Eleder Piñeiro Aguiar.
Revista Colombiana de Sociología, Print version ISSN 0120-159X
(Rev. colomb. soc. vol.44 no.1 Bogotá Jan./June 2021 Epub Nov 22, 2021)