Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo & Leo Heiblum: Echoes from the Borderlands

Chronicling a new sound art project on the US-Mexico border, led by the bestselling author of Lost Children Archive and The Story of My Teeth This volume documents a 24-hour, multilayered sound work, led by award-winning Mexican American author Valeria Luiselli. Echoes from the Borderlands maps the US-Mexico border from the Pacific Ocean at San Diego and Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico. This book, which focuses on the first 12 hours and accompanies an exhibition at Dia Chelsea, resuscitates the voices and visions of the largely female, Indigenous, Brown and Black peoples rendered absent in mainstream narratives about the border. While Echoes from the Borderlands addresses various mechanisms of extraction and violence, the devastating effects of industrialization as varied as mining and nuclear testing, and other forms of violence against bodies and the land, it also vividly recreates the everyday activity of plant life and human and non-human animals. Returning to the scene of her internationally acclaimed novel Lost Children Archive, Luiselli, along with her collaborators, Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum, invites readers into this dynamic counter narrative through remixing archival texts from advertisements to public speeches, interviews with local denizens and contemporary thinkers such as Fred Moten, as well as more imaginative responses to these contested lands, including a chorus of four narratresses who provide poignant and incisive commentary along the way. Valeria Luiselli is a Mexican-American author and the 2019 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. Her previous books include Lost Children Archive (2019), Tell Me How It Ends (2017), The Story of My Teeth (2013) and Sidewalks (2013). She is a professor at Bard College. Ricardo Giraldo currently directs the new podcast division of La Corriente del Golfo, a production company owned by Diego Luna and Gael Garca Bernal. Leonardo Heiblum is an award-winning Mexican composer and producer, and a longtime collaborator with Philip Glass and Patti Smith.