VF
(i)
n_1
, echo of violence

VF

In Mexico they say that “a los muertos de hoy los tapan los de mañana”, namely that every crime is soon overshadowed by a newer one. 80,000 have been the victims of a war between law enforcement and organized crime that began in 2006 at the behest of President Felipe Calderón that still does not seem to have achieved its goal. Drug cartels, powerful and bloody organizations, contend a marketplace that the DEA has estimated to be worth over 40 billion dollars a year. The Mexican drug wars fill daily newspapers with images of violence but rarely included are the views of ordinary people. Mexicans have, however, begun a process of direct testimony by using the tools they have at hand: smartphones and cameras; sharing videos and pictures on internet, participating in what we might call a normalization of the state of war. Around this dynamic habituation to violence has developed the work of the Mexican artist Luz María Sánchez with this multi-channel sound installation “V. F(i)n_1”, which won the first prize at the Biennial of the Frontiers in the category of emerging artists. It is a structure composed of 74 independent gun‐shaped sound diffusers and battery‐powered reproduction of sounds taken from video shootings shared on Youtube. What this amounts to is a sound plot that fades little by little as the batteries run out, leaving room for silence, another theme very dear to the drug traffickers. The installation gives a new form to the terrible experiences of the Mexican people and does so thanks to the Mexican people themselves. Benedetta Sabatini