EL TOPE

What memory do we choose to forget and can we belong without language? Can home be somewhere without a place? What happens when you realise the dream of home belongs to those who have stopped dreaming? Can you revive the dream?

A road connecting northern and southern Mexico cuts through the small city of Zapotitlán Salinas. A single speed bump, a tope, forces all who pass to slow down. From daybreak to nightfall, the same frame receives a succession of people, vehicles and social worlds. A letter addressed to home runs through this passage of time. Behind the hills, silence interrupts the road. The salt terraces, worked since before the Conquest, place the present alongside a much older continuity of labour, knowledge and relation to land. Repetition, interruption and return structure the work, bringing different loves, histories and temporalities into the same present. The relation between Master and Beauty runs through the letter, alongside questions of language, memory and belonging, while the dream of home acquires both a sacred and a political reality.

Developed over several years, EL TOPE is written, filmed and edited by Anna Senno. Cyrus Bayandor composed its music and soundscape. The sound is an immersive, delicate weave through the rhythms of the road, the voice and the intervals of silence.

Anna Senno is a visual artist and filmmaker working between France, Mexico and Sweden. Cyrus Bayandor is a British composer and musician based in Mexico City.