Dead coyote, 2020
I created a fake Facebook profile based on the stereotype of the classic American far-right redneck in order to infiltrate groups of a similar nature and interact with their members. Dead Coyote (also titled History of a Confused Love) presents an animated fragment of a conversation that took place within one of these groups. The exchange unfolds between my alter ego, Jeff Steinbaum, and Dina Gipper, one of the group’s users. During the conversation, Jeff goes through a depressive episode and, in his confusion, threatens to take his own life. Yet, despite this, an unexpected empathetic connection emerges between them—one that would likely not have been possible outside Facebook as a mediating space. These interactions reflect the complexity of the political and cultural relationship between Mexico and the United States, dissolving territorial boundaries by transferring them into digital environments and reinterpreting them through the animation and its installation form.