Performing the Border, 1999, video, 42 min

The forty-two-minute video essay by Ursula Biemann entitled Performing the Border deals with the phenomenon of the border at the discursive and at the concrete, physical levels, as it constitutes itself through the relationships between the two genders of the inhabitants of the Mexican city, Ciudad Juarez. In this city, on the Mexican-American border, American digital and electronic technology corporations built assembly plants, employing mostly unskilled, low-paid labour. In this social context, Ursula Biemann highlights the problems of "sexualisation of the border regions", as they are reflected in employment policies, prostitution, the entertainment industry and violence against women in the public social sphere. The artist makes use of various approaches of her own to focus on the exploration of specific conditions in relations between the genders which are, geographically and mentally, conditioned by the borderline region. At a time when the distinction between the body and machine, reproduction and production, man and woman, is becoming more intangible than ever before, we may assert that the video Performing the Border represents the border as the critical metaphor of marginalisation and artificial maintenance of subjective lines of division.