Political Equator II: Collective Territories /Territories of Intervention - a 2-Day Trans-Border Event :: San Diego / Tijuana :: November 16-17, 2007 :: Participants: Teddy Cruz, Caracas Think Tank, Ala Plástica, Tercerunquinto, Torolab, Oscar Romo, Gilles Clément, John Palmesino, Lost Highway Expedition, The Boredom Patrol, Ariana Hernandez, Jennifer Flores Sternad, Felipe Zuñiga, Lesley Stern, Lieven de Cauter, Markus Miessen.

Tracing an imaginary line along the US / México Border and extending it directly across a map of the world, what emerges is a political equator that roughly corresponds with the revised geography of the post-9/11 world according to Thomas P. M. Barnett’s scheme for The Pentagon’s New Map, in which he effectively divides the globe into “Functioning Core,” or parts of the world where “globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security,” and “Non-Integrating Gap,” “regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and … chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists.”

The Political Equator Conferences were launched in June 2006 with an investigation into the theme of Urbanities of Labor and Surveillance. Political Equator ll stages an exploration of the intersection between sociopolitical and natural domains, foregrounding the notion of a collective territory, but also a territory of collaboration that transgresses hemispheric boundaries. At the core of such trans-hemispheric sociopolitical and economic dynamics is the conflict between transcontinental borders and the natural and social ecologies they interrupt and seek to erase. A renewed politics of environmental activism, searching for effective paths to sustainability worldwide, increasingly collides and eventually clashes with the now-ubiquitous climate of heightened security and territorial dominance that is flourishing at the local as well as the global scale. What has been called the “disaster capitalism complex” is rapidly rising to its own form of dominance as global warming and terrorism challenge aging urban infrastructure and threaten fragile ecosystems and economies.

The field of operations represented by the collectives of architects and urbanists brought together for Political Equator ll traces an invisible trajectory across the political equator. This time the axis runs south to north, along which emergent Latin American practices of intervention simultaneously engage the politics of the environment and policies that are shaping contemporary cities. The Political Equator re-emerges in 2007 as a collaboration with Tránsito(ry) Público / Public(o) Transit(orio), following an event-based itinerary that travels from Los Angeles to San Diego to Tijuana, and back again. This provocative series of events and interventions will be hosted by major cultural institutions, neighborhood-based NGOs, and independent alternative spaces, eventually crossing over into the no man’s land of the border zone itself, where the Tijuana River symbolizes the conflicts these collaborative practices seek to expose and engage.

Tránsito(ry) Público / Public(o) Transit(orio) - A migratory installation of artists, activists, and militant researchers: in art spaces, parks, and a museum; around a university, under a bridge, and on the train :: Los Angeles, November 13-20, 2007. These events will bring together artists and activists from throughout Latin America and Los Angeles to create public discussions and performances in Santa Monica, Westwood, Hollywood, Downtown, and on the way to Tijuana. Participants:

Ala Plástica
Gloria Enedina Alvarez
Maritza Alvarez
Rodrigo Araujo
An Atlas
Cara Baldwin
BijaRi
Denise Bratton
Alfredo Brillembourg
Ava Bromberg
Nicholas Brown
Butchlalis de Panochtitlan
Caracas Urban Think Tank
Raúl Cárdenas Osuna
Gilles Clément
Teddy Cruz
Carmen Cuenca
Lieven De Cauter
Sandra de la Loza
Ariel Devincenzo
Maria Adela Diaz
Andrea Dietz
Kirsten Dufour
Etcétera…
Internacional Errorista/ Errorist International
Steve Fagin
Frente 3 de Fevereiro [February 3 rd Front]
Regina José Galindo
Felipe Teixeira Gonçalves
Aurora Guerrero
Colin Gunckel
Nancy Garín Guzmán
Eloisa Haudenschild
Marc Herbst
Robert Herbst
Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Jessica Hoffmann
Jenny Jaramillo
Just space(s)
Maria Karlsson
Bill Kelley, Jr.
Grant Kester
Hubert Klumpner
Suzanne Lacy
Daniel Lima
La Lleca
Lui Velazquez
Mónica Mayer
Elize Mazadiego
Carla Melo
Dalila Paola Mendez
Claudia A. Mercado
Markus Miessen
The Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA)
Taisha Paggett
John Palmesino
Kyong Park
The Pocho Research Society
Dont Rhine
Pilar Riaño-Alcalá
James Rojas
Alessandra Santos
Emily Scott
The Los Angeles Urban Rangers
Robert Sember
Elena Shtrombergl
Lesley Stern
Jennifer Flores Sternad
Torolab
Ulises Unda
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss
Brian Whitener
Felipe Zuñiga