{"id":1800,"date":"2025-07-03T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imaginedtheatres.com\/?post_type=issue&p=1800"},"modified":"2025-07-03T14:50:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T18:50:30","slug":"borders-ii","status":"publish","type":"issue","link":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/borders-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Borders II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BORDERS (Part II)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Border abolition now! <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Time expands and contracts. The twenty-first century after <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> between Trump\u2019s inauguration and<\/span> inauguration blinks\u2014on and off, off and on. The long tail of a tale until tal cual \u201cshe sat in her [\u2026] room, sharpening\u2026\u201d BORDERS II bookends <\/span>b<\/b>order<\/span>S<\/span><\/i> I (issue #08<\/a>), but does not foreclose it; once again recognizing the anecdote as pharmakon, as dream and wake-up call, as <\/span>cartas despedidas<\/span><\/i>, as a child, rearing out from under their mother\u2019s shift (x2) until alter-kinning is realized as a mutual, mutating gif(t). <\/span>Imagined Theatres<\/span><\/i> entries usually follow a set template. A \u201ctheatre\u201d is staged; a \u201cgloss\u201d is \u201csolicited\u201d in response. For this issue, from the jump, we dissolved the divide between \u201ctheatre\u201d and \u201cgloss,\u201d pre-pairing and thus preparing contributors to practice border abolition <\/span>formally<\/span><\/i>. Contra-zombification\u2014from political paralysis to the resuscitation of zombie laws haunting our presents\u2014we categorically rejected <\/span>a priori<\/span><\/i> readings of Trump 2.0 that cue up the tears of laughter in Karl Marx\u2019s \u201cThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte\u201d (\u201chistory repeats itself first by tragedy, second by farce.\u201d)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ahead of the Winter 2025 Los Angeles Fires, the US-wide state-side and offshoring of migrant detention, the Summer 2025 San Diego South Park resistance to ICE agents, the National Guard\u2019s LA occupation, the planetary mobilization of millions without \u201cKings,\u201d the amplified syncing of Israeli and US war machines, bunker-busting preemptively\u2026 we invited ten sets of cultural workers to contemplate col<\/span>labor<\/span><\/i>ation, to co-create gestures in\/around\/about\/against \u201cborders,\u201d broadly defined), in the spirit of spatial disobedience or revived claims (think President Claudia Sheinbaum\u2019s declaration that Mexico would be happy to build a wall along the international boundary line established by 1830 maps of North America). We asked artists, writers, thinkers to make work despite devaluations of joy, in the face of ongoing Administrations of Fear. <\/span>The resulting ten hyphenated theatres-glosses unfold in a multilingual, intermedial range of formats from journaling to poetry, two-acts \u2018n\u2019 special scenes, sketches, video performances, micro-fabulation (birds are real!), \u201cfake news\u201d headlining \u201cmutie\u201d forces folding forward into the eighth dimension.<\/span><\/p>\n

Say your goodbyes. Wake up with Guillermo G\u00f3mez Pe\u00f1a and Balitronica G\u00f3mez from \u201cel hamlet fronterizo\u201d love poem. Sing along with Alexandro Segade and Malik Gaines\u2019s found-farewell to Ch\u00e9 Guevara (at the very least, join the \u201ccoro\u201d or refrain from inaction). Go birding with Lily Hoang; nose-dive into a dilated bird\u2019s-eye-view (in anticipation of the aerial cartographies mapped out by Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman and Daniel Borzutsky), become a \u201ccitizen of The Night\u201d with Jackie Wang. \u201c<\/span>The specters within do not wane<\/span>\u201d: Home in on the local with Renate Ferro and Tim Murray on the trail of abolitionist and Indigenous geographies back to the future. Get on track with Laura P\u00e9rez Le\u00f3n and Amie Parry <\/span>to approach the \u201cborder dilemma\u201d as that which necessitates <\/span>a refusal of both \u201cself-ethnicizing appropriation and the reification of cultural difference as mutually constructed border affirming projects of the ongoing Cold War<\/span>.\u201d Watch Nature overtake Nation in the \u201cMEXUS\u201d of Cruz and Forman\u2019s docu-visualizations of a border\u2019s always-already slow biodrift. Catch a glimpse of our collective \u201cefflorescence\u201d in photographs of liminal institutional spaces or thoughts casting shadows in Jennifer Firestone and Wendy Xu\u2019s dialogical image-text meditations. To borrow a line (or two) from Borzutsky, \u201c[r]ecite poems about the block of ice\u201d that straddles the \u201cstate before the State\/s;\u201d catch the strain of \u201c<\/span>irresistible music of morning birdsong,\u201d <\/span>counter-harmonizing with Hoang and Wang\u2019s parables of de\/flocking, <\/span>in <\/span>Edgar Garcia\u2019s bath-tub dreamin\u2019 (\u201cforever more for having tasted the <\/span>fruite<\/span><\/i>\u201d\u2014\u201ca wedge or edge into Milton\u201d). Fangs, talons, and talents at the ready, bio-hack with micha c\u00e1rdenas; go with the flow of Allucqu\u00e9re Rosanne \u201cSandy\u201d Stone\u2019s trans-futuristic, chyron-ic newsfeed. Then, doubling down on Kaprow-Antin-esque\u00a0 \u201cchild\u2019s play,\u201d measure for measure, revel in the unboundedness of <\/span>microchimerism<\/span><\/i> (the word and worlds we didn\u2019t know we were looking for in the Chthulucene\u2019s primordial goo!), register the \u201cheavy-handed\u201d coincidence of chromatic synchronicity per the rhyme of the Egretta tricolor and the US, Norwegian, and Dominican flags in Las Hermanas Iglesias y familia\u2019s gallery of shape-shifting peek-a-boos and face-painting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSisterhood is powerful,\u201d and then some.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the 404 file re\/appears, don\u2019t be afraid to read, \u201cDemocracy is not found here.\u201d In the immortal words of Woody Guthrie, these fascists are \u201cbound to lose.\u201d Reload and refresh, keep on keeping on, arc like a rainbow\u2014we\u2019re in it to win it\u2014the long game.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ricardo Dominguez and Amy Sara Carroll\u00a0<\/p>\n

Co-Editors,\u00a0Issue 09: Borders II<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BORDERS (Part II) \u00a0 Border abolition now! Time expands and contracts. The twenty-first century after and between Trump\u2019s inauguration and inauguration blinks\u2014on and off, off and on. The long tail of a tale until tal cual \u201cshe sat in her [\u2026] room, sharpening\u2026\u201d BORDERS II bookends borderS I (issue #08), but does not foreclose it; […]","protected":false},"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/issues\/1800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/issues"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}