Event details 
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
5 pm

Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York

Free. Spaces are limited; register here.

As part of the opening celebration for Echoes from the Borderlands, a poignant, multilayered sound work featured at Dia Chelsea this winter, Dia’s director of publications Kamilah N. Foreman and deputy director of program Humberto Moro hold a conversation with artists Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo, and Leo Heiblum. The piece—which runs 24 hours, the time it takes to drive from San Diego and Tijuana off the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico—blends soundscapes, melodies, archival and field recordings, and interviews to highlight issues like the genocide of native peoples, migration, reproductive rights, and environmental destruction. At its core, the chapbook contains more than just the libretto to the audio in the galleries; it also presents imaginative responses to the border, including a chorus of four voices who provide incisive commentary along the way. A QR code inside the chapbook links to the audio for an immersive reading experience.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Africa, South Korea, and India. She is the author of the award-winning novels Faces in the Crowd (originally Los ingrávidos, 2011) and The Story of My Teeth (La historia de mis dientes, 2013), as well as essay collections Sidewalks (Papeles falsos, 2012) and Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions (2017), the latter winning the American Book Award. Her literary work has been translated to over 20 languages and appeared in publications such as Granta, Harper’s Magazine, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Her most recent novel, Lost Children Archive (2019), won several prizes including the Dublin Literary Award; was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and National Book Critics Circle award; and longlisted for the Booker Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction. Luiselli has volunteered in federal immigration court, translating testimonies of undocumented, asylum-seeking minors. In 2018, she received an Arts for Justice Fund grant to conduct research and develop a project related to mass incarceration, with which she started a creative writing workshop in a detention center for undocumented minors. A 2019 McArthur Fellow, Luiselli is the recipient of an Emerson Collective grant, a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship (all 2020). Luiselli teaches at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and lives in the Bronx.

Ricardo Giraldo works in sound, film promotion, contemporary classical music, audiovisual media, and exhibition design. He is the director of the new podcast division of La Corriente del Golfo. He has directed Cinema23 and its Fénix film awards (2012–19), the latter of which was broadcast on live TV in more than 50 countries, and served as programmer of the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival (2009–10). Having studied music in Mexico and the Netherlands, he has worked as composer-in-residence for the Residentie Orkest of the Hague from 2000 to 2005. His compositions and audiovisual works have been presented in different festivals and venues internationally. From 2006 to 2011, he was consigned to design the permanent exhibition on the Holocaust and other genocides for the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City. Giraldo lives in Mexico City.

Leonardo Heiblum is a composer, producer, and sound artist from Mexico City, where he studied piano and composition. He also studied tabla in India, son jarocho in Veracruz, and Latin American music in Argentina. Heiblum has produced for and played with Philip Glass on several records, including The Spirit of the Earth (2002), Concert for the Sixth Sun (2013), and Introducing the Suso/Glass Quartet (2018). One of the most prolific film composers in Mexico, Heiblum has, for the past 20 years, scored over 40 films from all over the world and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Among his major awards for composition are the Ariel (2009, 2013, and 2014) and Fénix (2016 and 2018), and films with his music have been lauded at the Berlinale, Festival de Cannes, and Sundance Film Festival. He has co-written and co-produced work with Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective. His Encyclopedia Sonica, an album of music composed from his decades-long archive of field recordings worldwide, was released in 2024. Heiblum lives in Tepoztlán, Morelos.