How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?
The FRONT Arte y Cultura Oct. 12, 2022 - Jan. 18, 2023 The exhibition “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” assembles recent site-specific works by Cog•nate Collective that celebrate critical tactics to facilitate movement and connection across borders. By mobilizing diverse forms including neon sculpture, multimedia installations, burgeoning archival gestures, and collaborations with and inspired by ants, the artists rehearse an aesthetics of proximity, vulnerability and collectivity they term cursi radical. The exhibition borrows its title from the extensively covered 1971 song by the Bee Gees, siting the question in the context of the U.S./Mexico border. In doing so, the artists give voice to the heartbreak caused by border and immigration enforcement policies that harm and damage innately interconnected communities and ecologies in our region, while simultaneously pointing to the vital need to propose and rehearse ways of mending what has been broken. This is a love letter dedicated to the joyful, nimble resilience of our transborder communities. 
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?
Text Video and Sound Installation, 26 in x 48 in. Covers of the Bee Gees’ widely-covered song, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” serve as backdrop for video and photo documentation from the artists’ family archives depicting family dancing at house parties in Tijuana, BC and Calexico, CA in the early 90s, a point of departure for the exhibition. Among these covers are versions by Jesus Medina Gutiérrez, the artists’ tío abuelo and longtime musician based in Mexicali, BC..
The installation continues the artists interest in thinking of ways love songs – specifically "souldies" relating to love lost and the desire to be reunited with those we have been ripped away from – can help articulate social and political heartbreak. This became a point of departure for an essay that explores the concept of "Cursi Radical", an aesthetic of radical vulnerability that combines elements of camp, rasquachismo and domesticana. The essay is available here. </3
Neon Diptych, 26 in x 48 in. A central component of the exhibition are a set of neon signs. One renders a broken heart with splitting in two. The gap follows the shape of the U.S./Mexico border. In the second sign, the heart is shown together, but with the border line running across it. As a set, they ask viewers to consider how the border is a wound that tears us apart, but, it is also the site where we must come to suture ourselves together again.
On the Occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the Implementation of Operation Gatekeeper (10,000 - 80,000 tears)
Soundsystem (speakers with embroidered fronts, intervened custom vinyl record, turntable, reverb, amplifier), Dimensions Variable The ongoing militarization of the U.S./Mexico border, coupled with restrictions to the legal right to request asylum, has transformed our region into the “deadliest land route for migrants worldwide” according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Such deaths are a direct consequence of border enforcement policies which have pushed migrants to undertake increasingly dangerous routes, starting in October 1994 with Operation Gatekeeper implemented here in San Diego/Tijuana. In the ensuing 30 years, at least 10,000 people have lost their lives attempting to cross the border – with local human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch estimating the number to be as high as 80,000.
This installation seeks to memorialize these deaths. At the heart of it, is a set of vintage speakers belonging to the artists’ family – previously used as for family parties and gatherings – whose fronts have been embroidered with representations of cempasuchil, a flower connected to Day of the Dead ritual celebrations. Playing from the speakers, is a custom clear vinyl record that has been cut with a “dead groove” – a silent track that the turntable needle can follow when playing. The artists incised a cut in the shape of the U.S./Mexico border into the record, causing the needle to make a snapping sound whenever it passes over this scratch. It would take approximately 2.5 hours to listen to 10,000 of these clicks, and almost 20 hours to hear 80,000. Wax Tablets (“On this land” / “History” / “Costumbres”) + Wax Tablets (Para Recordar)
Raw Beeswax Triptych, 11in. x 14in. Inspired by philosophical comparisons of human memory to wax tablets and building on Cognate’s interest in incorporating organic materials into spaces for memory and ritual, the artists also created hand-poured and hand-carved wax tablets from binational beeswax sourced from bees from agricultural farms along the Baja/Alta California border region.
The tablets are inscribed with a quote by Marxist historian Frederic Jameson (“history is…”), lyrics from Juan Gabriel’s song “Costumbres”, famously performed by Rocio Durcal (“es verdad…”), and the opening line of the poem “We have on this land that which makes life worth living…” by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish – an expression of solidarity with the people of Palestine and their struggle against borders militarized by some of the same companies providing surveillance and policing equipment used along the U.S./Mexico border. As part of the exhibition, we also created a large-scale mural composed of tablets, for the public to incise memorial messages with styluses provided. The prompt: Write a tribute to loved ones and/or homelands that you carry with you in your memory and heart. Brown Noise Radio
Geodesic dome listening station, petate, pillows, radio broadcast intervention + workshop series As part of the exhibition we conducted workshops in San Ysidro and Tijuana exploring the healing properties of sound-bathing with Brown Noise – the sound generated by hearing all frequencies audible to our human ears being played back simultaneously, with slight amplification of lower tones on the sonic spectrum. Brown Noise is said to have therapeutic properties such as lowering stress and improving focus, thanks to the deeper/bassier quality it has when compared to “white noise” (the sound of analog television or radio static).
In the gallery, we set up a geodesic dome listening station that invited visitors to experience Brown Noise, by laying on the pillows in the center of the dome or using headphones while sitting on the benches. As part of the workshop series, participants assembled a living archive of sounds with comparable healing properties: sounds that can help us foster attentiveness, nurture resistance, and/or cultivate belonging. We pulled from this archive to create mixtapes that were be broadcast in San Ysidro over hyper-local FM radio in January 2024, offering neighbors the opportunity to enjoy collective moments of listening and respite. The broadcasts also included interviews and special commissions from artists and scholars like Marcelo Garzo Montalvo, who shared perspectives on the relationship between brown-ness, sound and healing. 
Dedicated to the one I Love (Vol. 1 & 2)
Video documentation of sonic intervention, vinyl, phone audio-recorder. Dimensions Variable. Inspired by “oldies” radio programs that invite requests and dedications from listeners – like the “Art Laboe Connection” (93.5 FM) in Los Angeles, the “Oldies Show Requests & Dedications” (92.5 FM) in San Diego, and “Radio Complacencias” (formerly 1310 AM, now online) in Tijuana – we have been inviting publics to issue "dedications" – in the form of a song and/or a message of solidarity – with (im)migrants, asylum seekers and border dwellers whose everyday lives are impacted by increasing militarization, xenophobia and policing at the U.S./Mexico border.
The first “Dedicated to the One I Love” mixtape broadcast which took place in Tijuana on December 19, 2018. The mixtape was transmitted over hyper-local “pirate” radio as part of a mobile broadcast performance traversing spaces where acts of physical and symbolic violence were committed against asylum seekers and migrants. Along the way, the artists spread a trail of salt water from the Pacific Ocean as a ritual act of sonic cleansing. The mixtape included song dedications and messages of solidarity recorded by the artists during a residency at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For this exhibition we created a "dedications" hotline in the gallery, setting up a phone for visitors to record their messages and song requests. These were later transmitted as part of the Brown Noise Radio broadcasts in January 2024. Hormigueo Poem
Digital photo prints, custom nameplate necklaces Hormigueo Poem is a text that was inspired by reflections upon what is spoken and unspoken at the point of inspection when crossing the U.S./Mexico border through a designated port of entry. The artists authored the poem as a series of custom-fabricated nameplate necklaces. The necklaces were worn by a series of performers who crossed the U.S./Mexico border in sequence through the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Sep. 14, 2024.
The project is inspired by the notion of “hormigueo,” which translates to something like “ant-ing” in Spanish, a common practice of crossing small quantities of a given good across the border, in various trips or by numerous people instead of crossing a large quantity in one go – a way of avoiding restrictions, tariffs, confiscation or increased inspections at border checkpoints. Also a metaphor for how transborder people collectively bear the indignities and violences of the crossing.
The total value of the work (all 15 necklaces), for example, is $10,001, which renders the work a “negotiable instrument” of monetary value that would need to be declared at the inspection point in the Port of Entry if crossed by a single individual. Given that it was crossed collectively there was no need to declare it as such – illustrating the powerful potential of collective movement and agency of transborder citizens. |