Border Cantos: Photography & Music from the U.S.–Mexico Border

Join Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo for a conversation about their upcoming book, Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). This City Arts & Lectures event will include an original piece created and performed by Galindo and vocalist Amy X Neuburg, featuring instruments made from items found along the border, as well as projections of Misrach’s images. Alexis Madrigal will lead a conversation with the artists. A book signing will follow.

Border Cantos is a cross-disciplinary exploration of the U.S.–Mexico border, developed collaboratively by photographer Richard Misrach and composer Guillermo Galindo. The project features monumental landscapes by Misrach and musical instruments created by Galindo from found objects recovered at the border: a shoe, a water bottle, a backpack. Border Cantos offers new avenues for approaching heated political issues around immigration, border security, and immigration reform, and is a poetic response to the often polarizing discussions around these issues.

For more information and ticketing, visit cityarts.net.

Richard Misrach (born in Los Angeles, 1949) is one of the most influential photographers of his generation, well-known for his ongoing project Desert Cantos. His work is held by major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. He is the recipient of four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Kulturpreis for Lifetime Achievement in Photography. His other books with Aperture include Violent Legacies (1992), On the Beach (2007), Destroy This Memory (2010), Petrochemical America (with Kate Orff, 2012), Golden Gate (2012), and The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings (2015). He is represented by Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Mark Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles; and Pace/MacGill, New York.

Guillermo Galindo (born in Mexico City) is an experimental composer. His interpretations of concepts such as musical form, time perception, music notation, sonic archetypes, and sound-generating devices span a wide spectrum of artistic works performed and shown at major festivals, concert halls, and art exhibitions throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. His orchestral composition includes two symphonies: Ome Acatl, premiered in Mexico City by the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM (OFUNAM, 1997), and Trade Routes (2006), commissioned and premiered by the Oakland East Bay Symphony orchestra and chorus. His operas include two major works: Califas 2000, with text and performance by MacArthur Fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Decreation/Fight Cherries, with text by MacArthur Fellow poet Anne Carson.

Image: Richard Misrach, Wall, east of Nogales, Arizona, 2015, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016)