PARA/normal Borders Conversation III: Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten

Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten
Part III of the PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series

Language is one of the many borders that shape our lives. It carries histories, preserves memory, and creates new possibilities for connection across difference. Writers Cristina Rivera Garza and Fred Moten will both read from their work and then engage in a conversation about translation, poetry, and collective study, examining how literature moves across linguistic, cultural, and institutional boundaries. Together, they explore how literary practice can confront history, imagine new futures, and expand the possibilities of shared knowledge.

PARA/normal Borders is the 2026–27 edition of the MexiCali Biennial, a multidisciplinary exhibition and public humanities initiative exploring the borderlands as a space where visible and invisible histories converge. Rather than treating the border solely as a geopolitical boundary, the project approaches it as a cultural, psychological, ecological, and technological condition that shapes contemporary life.

Inspired by the concept of the borderlands as a “thin place,” PARA/normal Borders considers how migration, language, memory, Indigenous knowledge, media, surveillance, and speculative futures intersect across the California–Mexico border region. Through exhibitions, performances, publications, research initiatives, and public conversations, the Biennial invites artists, writers, scholars, and communities to examine the many ways borders continue to influence how we remember, imagine, and inhabit the world.

The PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series brings together MacArthur Fellows whose work expands our understanding of borders across literature, film, visual art, music, and critical scholarship.

This program is co-presented by MacArthur Foundation, the MexiCali Biennial and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series, in partnership with the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts and the Archive for New Poetry, and GalleryQI.

This event is free and open to the public.

Public reception immediately following event.

→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion I: Josh Kun + Alex Rivera

→ Learn more about PARA/normal Borders Discussion II: Sky Hopinka + Maggie Nelson

Cristina Rivera Garza Photo by Marisol Cid.