Sample Clips from The Place Where People’s Hearts Are Eaten, 2020.

Walking Performance, 8 Days, 84 miles. Video, 41:14

“The Place Where People’s Hearts Are Eaten” is a video documentation of a symbolic walk along the length of one of the last remaining wall ruins of the Roman Empire, Hadrian’s Wall. A symbolic barrier erected to keep “nomads” outside of the empire’s border, the video is an endurance performance along the Great Whin Sill, as the landscape along the Hadrian’s Wall is called.  This video puts in focus the function (or lack thereof) of walls as gestural markers and as social, psychological and symbolic barriers. Silent, with “subtitles” representing a train-of-thought narrative, the video develops into a dialogue with different allusions along the walk—historical perspectives and mythological encounters with the borders of the Underworld.

* “The Place Where People’s Hearts Are Eaten” is referenced from Signs Preceding The End of The World by Yuri Herrera, a lyrical novel about a Mexican migrants tale.  This work becomes an ode to Herrera’s use of Mesoamerican supernatural tales of shapeshifting and rebirth.