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PERFORMING THE BORDER (1999, 43 min)
a documentary film
by Ursula Biemann

Performing the Border is a documentary video filmed on the border between the United States and Mexico, in the city of Ciudad Juarez, on the Mexican side. It was shot in a zone near El Paso, in Texas, where the American industries have built assembly plants for electronic and digital components. Ursula Biemann observes the border through the prism of the growing feminisation of its labour sector, prostitution, leisure activities and acts of violence. In the form of an investigation, the artist integrates different sources of documentation into her video: interviews with women working in the plants, prostitutes, activists and journalists.

These interviews are punctuated by the artist’s voice-over narration – analysing the concept of borders – but also by citations and archive images. All of these sources are integrated in a rapid, almost televisual, editing style that is enriched with images of the actual border and the surrounding desert. Ursula Biemann suggests that we reflect on what the notion of the border represents, and to what extent it influences the living and working conditions of women, through the example of Ciudad Juarez. The video comprises several chapters: firstly, a presentation of the border as a geographical space and a “zone of performance”, then the situation of women and the absence of labour laws, and finally, the prostitution and murders whose victims are the women of the region.