Reunión: North Border

Reunión: North Border is a unique artist-book and collaborative project by Dani Zelko that emerges from a conversational, poetic, and social practice

spanning Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The publication presents a series of enacted and documented encounters that involve listening, speaking, writing, and reading—everyday yet uncanny acts that are always grounded in proximity and exchange. Zelko invites people he meets—often individuals navigating life at and across borders—to dictate poems to him, which he transcribes by hand. These texts, spoken aloud and written down, become the foundation for printed books that are then read back to communities, shared, and circulated. In North Border, this process extends across multiple locations, creating a chain of situations in which subjects dictate and read, read and listen, embodying connection through relational acts rather than abstract representation. The book—printed in risograph over 204 pages—documents this collective project of poem-making and reading aloud, emphasizing presence, voice, and shared narrative as artistic practice. Its cover photograph captures an early presentation moment at a border crossing, where poems were read and distributed among traveling communities seeking asylum.