Teeter-Totter Wall, 2019 4 Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 9 2019

Location: 

Anapra, New Mexico, US-Mexico border

hot pink see-saws installed along the US-Mexico border where one person on each side can sit and see-saw with the other. installed at Sunland Park, nine miles northwest of El Paso, on the 18 feet slats border wall between Mexico and the United States. It is at this site where the US Border Patrol detained about 300 migrants from Mexico. (Public Delivery) the installation lasted only 1 day and was done without permission.

The installation was taken down the same day, but Rael and San Fratello are still dedicated to continuing their project. Looking ahead, the duo wants to challenge the impact the current wall has already had.

"The construction of a wall dehumanizes a population. When we cut people off from neighbors or from communities, and when we damage the environment, it comes with consequences. We’re going to have to reckon with that. We want to help transform the borderlands into a place where we can heal the scars that the wall has produced." -- Rael San Fratello

External sources: 

https://publicdelivery.org/ronald-rael-seesaws/
Posted by leviya on Apr 9 2025

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
OtherHelps bring about change in a way not accounted for in the options above. Please describe how it does this in the text box below.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.
Strengthens (community)Strengthens, builds and celebrates community through ritual and/or symbol.
Sustains (change)Support and celebrate change that has already been won and needs to be sustained.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
per Rael San Fratello himself: The construction of a wall dehumanizes a population. When we cut people off from neighbors or from communities, and when we damage the environment, it comes with consequences. We’re going to have to reckon with that. We want to help transform the borderlands into a place where we can heal the scars that the wall has produced.

Notes

I think this project was effective in making people see the other side of the wall, and how silly it is that we even have a border wall like that in the first place. it created community and awareness for the issue of the border wall, and how immigrants are treated.