Science Fiction in the Edgelands, by Chris N. Brown

 

0. Border and Futures

“BORDER CLOSED. NETWORK OPEN.”

So reads the text of an information card handed out earlier this summer to occupants of the twelve lanes of cars backed up two hours and longer to cross the border from Tijuana into metro San Diego. The card was one of hundreds of different future interventions conducted by science fiction writer Pepe Rojo, also a member of the media studies faculty of the Autonomous University of Baja California, and 150 of his students—energetic members of the imaginary Tijuana Liberation Front (FLT). Over a period of two months, with official sponsorship from the Tijuana Cultural Center and a guerilla budget, Rojo and team hacked the paramilitary zone of the border crossing with experiential suggestions as to how locals can see their own future through that razorwire prism of cultural confluence. Notable interventions included:

• The procession of Santa ste.la, the patron saint of technological accidents, through urban Tijuana, her appearance as a cyborg Guadalupe causing numerous pleas for baptism from confused bystanders.