COLD CASE FILE #9

Francis Alÿs, The Loop
Location: San-Diego, CA / Tijuana, Mexico border (32.545945,-117.0298)
Time or Duration: 1997

CRIME REPORT:
The United States Border Authority has issued a warrant for questioning the Mexico City-based artist Francis Alÿs regarding his 1997 project The Loop. The Border Authority has become aware that in 1997, Alÿs circumvented the much contested US-Mexico border at Tijuana: using his exhibition fee for an exhibition in San Diego, he traveled by plane from Tijuana to Mexico City, to Panama City, Santiago, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Anchorage, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and finally south to San Diego. Alÿs exposed a loophole in Mexico-US border control through a physical loop on a global scale, but in so doing highlighted the fact that this could only be possible for a privileged few. The site you may visit via the documentation link below is the one Alÿs did not: the Tijuana-San Diego border. Today, anyone with an internet connection can cross the Mexico-US border on Google street view without a passport or security questions. Like Alÿs’s Loop, it is uncertain if this virtual loophole is liberating or troubling.

DOCUMENTATION:
[CRIME SCENE] | [PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE]