The MexiCali Biennial is pleased to announce the PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series, a public humanities program presented as part of the Biennial’s 2026–27 edition, PARA/normal Borders. Bringing together six MacArthur Fellows from the fields of music, film, literature, visual art, and cultural criticism, the series invites audiences to explore how artistic and scholarly practices shape our understanding of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Through three public conversations, participants will examine how creative work can deepen our understanding of the cultural storytelling that connects communities. Through music, film, literature, and critical scholarship, these conversations explore the borderlands as spaces that are, in many ways, haunted by the people, languages, and histories that have crossed them.
Rather than treating the border as a fixed line separating one nation from another, this series approaches it as a liminal space—a place where identities, languages, histories, and ways of knowing continually overlap. These conversations ask how artists and scholars make visible what exists between categories: between memory and history, fact and fiction, presence and absence, here and there.
Co-presented by the MacArthur Foundation, MexiCali Biennial, and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series, these conversations offer an opportunity to hear leading artists, writers, filmmakers, and scholars reflect on the borderlands as a dynamic space where culture, histories, speculative storytelling, and lived experience continually intersect.
All events are free and open to the public. Advance registration is encouraged.
The 2026–27 PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series
Conversation I: Josh Kun + Alex Rivera
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
5:00–7:00 p.m. (Reception to follow)
Ruth B. Shannon Center for the Performing Arts
Whittier College | Whittier, California
Music, film, media, and storytelling shape how histories are recorded, shared, and remembered. Cultural historian Josh Kun and filmmaker Alex Rivera explore the role of artistic practice in recovering overlooked histories, connecting communities, and imagining new futures across the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.
→ Learn more and register for Conversation I
Conversation II: Sky Hopinka + Maggie Nelson
Thursday, October 15, 2026
5:00–7:00 p.m. (Reception to follow)
Atkinson Hall Auditorium
University of California, San Diego | La Jolla, California
Through experimental film, writing, and critical inquiry, Sky Hopinka and Maggie Nelson consider how memory, language, perception, and embodied experience shape the ways we understand place, history, and one another. Together, they explore artistic practice as a way of knowing and imagining the world differently.
→ Learn more about Conversation II (registration forthcoming)
Conversation III: Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten
Wednesday, January 13, 2027
5:00–7:00 p.m. (Reception to follow)
Atkinson Hall Auditorium
University of California, San Diego | La Jolla, California
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza and poet, theorist, and scholar Fred Moten explore how language, translation, poetry, and collective study move across cultural and institutional boundaries. Through readings and conversation, they examine literature’s capacity to confront history, cultivate shared knowledge, and imagine new possibilities for the future.
→ Learn more about Conversation III (registration forthcoming)
Meet the Speakers
Josh Kun
Cultural historian; USC Vice Provost for the Arts and USC Annenberg Professor of Communication
Vice Provost for the Arts at USC and Professor in the USC Annenberg School for Communication, Josh Kun explores the intersections of music, race, migration, and cultural exchange. His scholarship demonstrates how music functions as a living archive, revealing the histories and communities that connect the Americas. A MacArthur Fellow, Kun’s work bridges academic research and public humanities through books, exhibitions, and collaborative cultural projects.
Alex Rivera
Filmmaker and Co-Founder of Borderlands Cinematic Arts at ASU
Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work examines migration, labor, surveillance, and technology through speculative cinema. Best known for Sleep Dealer and The Infiltrators, Rivera uses science fiction and documentary to challenge conventional narratives about borders and globalization. A MacArthur Fellow and Associate Professor at Arizona State University, his films imagine futures that illuminate the social realities of the present.
Sky Hopinka
artist and filmmaker
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) creates films, photographs, and installations that explore Indigenous language, memory, place, and cultural continuity. His work reflects on homeland, landscape, and storytelling, demonstrating how language itself becomes a living repository of history and identity. A MacArthur Fellow, Hopinka’s practice expands our understanding of how knowledge is carried across generations.
Maggie Nelson
Writer and cultural critic
Maggie Nelson is an acclaimed writer whose work moves fluidly between memoir, philosophy, criticism, and cultural theory. Through books that examine art, identity, ethics, and embodiment, she challenges conventional boundaries between disciplines and ways of knowing. Her writing invites readers to reconsider how experience, language, and perception shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
Cristina Rivera Garza
Writer, historian, and literary scholar
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza explores memory, archives, translation, and the enduring effects of violence across borders. Writing across fiction, poetry, criticism, and history, she investigates the relationship between language and collective memory while continually pushing the boundaries of literary form. A MacArthur Fellow, her work demonstrates how literature can recover hidden histories and imagine new futures.
Fred Moten
Poet, theorist, and scholar
Fred Moten’s work bridges poetry, philosophy, performance, and Black studies, examining questions of collectivity, creativity, and resistance. Through writing, teaching, and artistic collaboration, he investigates how language and performance generate new forms of thought and shared life. A MacArthur Fellow, Moten’s work continues to influence conversations across literature, critical theory, visual art, and performance.
PARA/normal Borders is made possible through support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through its X-Grant program celebrating the Foundation’s 40th anniversary. Additional support is provided by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council.
This program is co-presented by the MexiCali Biennial and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series. Partners include Whittier College, the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts, the Archive for New Poetry, and Gallery QI.
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