Una casa en llamas es un fantasma, una fábrica en flamas es un espectro
(A house on fire is a ghost, a factory on fire is a specter)

A house on fire is a ghost, a factory on fire is a specter is a computer-generated two-channel video installation. Through an exploration of my family history and its close connection with the arms industry, I focus on both of my grandfathers —an American fighter pilot and a Mexican assembly line worker, or a soldier and an engineer— as two parallel figures within the military-industrial complex narrative.

Through the employment of video game design and development software, I recreated two long-lost sites that belonged to my family, equally lost to fire: a house in California, property of my paternal grandfather, and a maquila in Tijuana, owned by my maternal grandfather. As a way to understand generational trauma, this work dismantles and critically analyzes the industrial interdependence between Mexico and the United States reconstructed by a personal story in a web of affective relationships, mental health policies, cross-border labor, and war technologies.