In both his films and curatorial efforts (like the series "Mexperimental Cinema," presented at the HFA in January), Los Angeles–based media artist Jesse Lerner has probed the hybridity of Mexican culture. In this self-described "fake documentary" Lerner mixes a heterogeneous array of materials, including animated sequences, to challenge the historical reading of ruins in Mexico. Using appropriated sounds, fabricated artifacts, and constructed imagery, he comically commingles fake and real to explore the nature of archaeological research, the ascription of authenticity to art objects, and the creation of that fiction we call history. The result of his counter-documentary strategies, according to Los Angeles Weekly critic Holly Willis, "is the creation of a fantastic, spiraling vertigo of fact and fiction that unsettles the very notion of historical documents and of documentary filmmaking itself." As the title suggests, Ruins leaves both its subject and assumptions about the truth of recorded sounds and images in a state of permanent disrepair.