MAMA: video screen

Brazilian and Swiss artist team Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg's inSITE2000 project, "MAMA," was based on work the artists undertook during several extended residencies in the region. Interested in investigating the issues of border security and immigration, the artists met with numerous groups, organizations, and individuals on either side of the border to collect materials. Through this process the artists narrowed their work to deal specifically with K-9 US customs officers on the one hand, and on the other, Mexican citizens trying to cross the border illegally. What interested Dias and Riedweg were the maternal relationships of the K-9 officers and how that informed the relationships they developed with their dogs and in turn the work they were performing daily. The work became an investigation of the border between private and public selves, and of the transgression and transference of private psychology on public situations.

The project was shown as a video installation housed in two separate structures located in the San Ysidro pedestrian passage, Pasillo Turistico. Built to simulate the shape and size of ordinary cargo containers, one structure contained video of interviews with the customs officers and showed them interacting with their dogs. Each officer was asked to give his definition of "territory" and "authority." The other structure showed a looped video clip of illegal immigrants meeting up at night around a fire waiting for the "right" moment to jump the fence. --inSITE2000

• 2000

• Dias, Mauricio (Brazilian installation artist, born 1964)
• Riedweg, Walter (Swiss installation and video artist, born 1955)

• InSITE2000

This image is a scan of a 35mm color slide from the InSite Archive (MSS 707, Box 309, Folder 03, Item 095)

San Ysidro, San Diego, California, United States

Two-part video installation

• InSITE2000

• Mexican-American border region

• Installations (visual works)

• Border art
• Border patrol agents
• Boundaries
• Dogs
• Graphic arts
• Mothers
• Political art
• Sons
• Video art

• image

Shared Shelf: 16715376

Online finding aid

• inSite Archive

Film, Audio, Video and Digital Art

Performing Arts (including Performance Art)

Sculpture and Installations

[Title, Date]. InSite Archive. MSS 707. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Unknown (US)

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2020-10-28