Repellent Fence: Installation/Schedule of Events 10/9-10/12

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postcommodity.com/Repellent_Fence_Events.html

The Repellent Fence is a social collaborative project among individuals, communities, institutional organizations, publics, and sovereigns that culminate with the establishment of a large-scale temporary monument located near Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora. This land-art work is comprised of 28 tethered balloons, that are each 10 feet in diameter, and float 50 feet above the desert landscape. The balloons that comprise Repellent Fence are enlarged replicas of an ineffective bird repellent product. Coincidently, these balloons use indigenous medicine colors and iconography -- the same graphic used by indigenous peoples from South America to Canada for thousands of years. The purpose of this monument is to bi-directionally reach across the U.S./Mexico border as a suture that stitches the peoples of the Americas together—symbolically demonstrating the interconnectedness of the Western Hemisphere by recognizing the land, indigenous peoples, history, relationships, movement and communication.


Repellent Fence: Schedule of Events

Two mile long ephemeral land art installation and social engagement.
Located at US/Mexico Border: Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora.
Installation and public events on October 9 - 12, 2015.
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Friday, October 9, 2015
Sunrise Sunrise – Event Score: Community Installation of Repellent Fence
2:00 PM -- Repellent Fence press tour
4:00 PM -- Repellent Fence walking tour
7:00 PM -- Repellent Fence opening reception
Saturday, October 10, 2015
10:00 AM - Repellent Fence walking tour
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM -- Agua Prieta Fiesta/Douglas Fiesta
4:00 PM - Repellent Fence walking tour
4:00 PM - 10:00 PM -- Bi-national Artwalk
7:00 PM - 2015 -- Symposium on Indigenous Public Art: Experiential Practices of Re-Indigenizing the Borderlands
Panel Discussion featuring Postcommodity/ Ana Teresa Fernández /Jenea Sanchez
Sunday, October 11, 2015
10:00 AM - Repellent Fence walking tour
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM -- Symposium on Indigenous Public Art: Experiential Practices and Indigenous Borderlands
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM -- Syymposium Workshop by Ana Teresa Fernández
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Lunch

1 - 2:30 PM Panel 1 Presentation: "Getting" Indian Country: Inviting Tactical Approaches to Transborder Knowledge Building
------------------------------ 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM Panel 1 Q & A / Discussion
This panel will feature Pat Riggs, former director of economic development at Yselta del Sur Pueblo, whose work centers on protecting and promoting culture and rebuilding sovereignty and assets through community engagement and capacity building. As a tribal leader committed to working collaboratively with internal and external agencies to seek the betterment of the Pueblo and all Native American people, Pat will discuss partnering with Harvard and the University of Arizona to build capacity and resources for the Pueblo while honoring core values, culture, and traditional practices of Tigua ancestors. Jennifer Clifton, professor at The University of Texas at El Paso, and Elenore Long, professor at Arizona State University, will respond to Riggs’ invitation for tactical approaches and culturally sustaining relationships capable of building transborder knowledges and will interpret the significance of Repellent Fence in light of the possibilities and implicit challenges that Riggs’ invitation carries with it. Specifically, Clifton, who is forging an emergent partnership with the Tigua, will offer grounded narratives that illustrate the need for universities to partner with Indian Country to construct more expansive transborder knowledges capable of interrogating and re-imagining borders and infrastructure based on the logics and self-other relations of imperialism and capitalism. Finally, in light of Riggs’ invitation, Long will consider the ways Repellent Fence re-writes polity as a key concept of public life inviting us to re-imagine who we are stuck with and how.

3 PM - 4:30 PM Panel 2 Presentation: De-socializing Social Art Practices, Views from Borderzones
------------------------------ 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM Panel 2 Q & A / Discussion
This panel discussion will focus on refining ideas around de-socializing and intersections between social practice and border politics from Indigenous perspectives. Our question is how practices consciously looking at strategies of “de-socialization” might be sites of temporary sovereignty, a place from which the increasing militarization and politicization of the border can be addressed. Aligned with de-colonial discourses, de-socialization implies an awareness of social structures and expected behaviors and practices imposed and embodied by Indigenous people by dominant society. This panel asks how social space is created as well as how living in borderzones socializes us. For many Indigenous peoples, the border was not a fixed, clearly demarcated site, but a place of continual movement and flux, influenced by negotiation, consensus, and also conflict. During the formation of nation-states like Canada, United States, and Mexico, Indigenous territories were delineated (and radically reduced) in order to gain legitimacy relative to this new political context. Indigenous “borders” between territories are often sharply contested and overlapping, while those traversing reserves, reservations, and territorial boundaries daily may not realize that they are crossing borders at all. With this in mind, what potential do these other conceptions of borders, as well as the conscious and active creation of social spaces as practices of resistance to oppression offer in the context of the U.S./Mexico border?

5:00 - 6:00 PM -- Keynote by Roberto Bedoya: The Sovereignty of Context
6:00 - 8:00 PM -- Repellent Fence night walking tour. Repellent Fence lighted by portable lights.
Monday, October 12, 2015
10:00 AM -- Repellent Fence walking tour
4:00 PM -- Repellent Fence walking tour
Repellent Fence closes at nightfall
Repellent Fence is presented in collaboration with Arizona State University Art Museum and supported by grants from Creative Capital, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation and Art Matters.

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Szu-Han Ho
Assistant Professor of Art & Ecology
Department of Art and Art History
University of New Mexico
505.977.5457
[e-mail]