Survey/Surveil explores the visual rhetoric and psychogeography of the U.S./Mexico border through video, interactive sculpture, photography, and appropriated imagery. We have worked independent of each other, except for a few conversations, and our nature of creating and reference of experience are quite different. However, we are intrigued by and have made work in response to similar issues, in particular the construction of border identity by the public and media, notions of otherness, the land as a surveyed/surveilled space, and the game of us vs. them that is played out daily along the line.

With an understanding that vision facilitates each of these issues and functions as the chief method of control in this environment, we have built an installation that shifts the context of looking and invites reflection on what is being seen and by whom. Within the space, we also invite interaction within real and constructed situations, illuminating how seductive it is to engage in the game of watching.

Ultimately this exhibition reflects our collective effort to use art as a means to pose significant social questions about borders, ways of looking, immigration, smuggling, and modes of representation. Rather than using the work to make a value judgment, we are most interested in the installation serving as a catalyst for critical inquiry and contemplation. And through participation we work to provide viewers an opportunity to explore multiple perspectives — to watch and to be watched.