Chantal Akerman
From the Other Side, Fragment
In 2020, the UNAM International Film Festival (FICUNAM) celebrated its tenth anniversary. The keystone of this edition was the Chantal Akerman retrospective and the MUAC participated by hosting this installation. The pandemic unfortunately interrupted its exhibition, but we have taken advantage of our reopening to offer the public a second opportunity to see it.
From the Other Side, Fragment, conceived for Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002), is a video installation based on the documentary From the Other Side, which had been shot to be seen in theaters. Akerman filmed it in two border towns: Agua Prieta, Sonora and Douglas, Arizona. While they are very close to each other, nationalist mythology exacerbated their differences during the Clinton administration and a several-kilometer-long wall between the two forces undocumented immigrants to cross through the desert. For people in Arizona, immigrants are seen as a threat to be fought. In Sonora, they talk of disappearance and absence. The documentary also incorporates archival images in which government officials hunt Mexicans with infrared devices. This material was proudly shared with the filmmaker by Border Patrol officials.
The first part of this video installation consists of a monitor showing the final sequence of the documentary: images of the Border Patrol and a tracking shot of the highway on the way to Los Angeles, while Akerman, offscreen, tells the story of a missing Mexican immigrant.
The second part is a record of the action that the filmmaker performed for Documenta 11, which consisted of showing the end of the documentary at night on a giant outdoor screen situated between two mountains on either side of the border, in the very place where the film was shot. The images fade and disappear with the break of dawn. Through this gesture, the filmmaker spoke for those absent, those who can no longer be invoked except through words, thoughts and memories.
It is not a minor paradox that a filmmaker and visual artist would provoke the disappearance of images, but Akerman has thus brilliantly captured the essence of the border conflict, which revolves around those whom we do not wish to see, as we find them undesirable, and those we can no longer see, because they’re no longer here.
Artist: Chantal Akerman (Brussels, 1950)
Curator: Claire Atherton
Exhibition coproduced by FICUNAM and MUAC
