Artists for Movement

The United States is known as a melting pot nation: with a slew of ethnicities, religions, and ideologies blended together to form one diversely unified nation. No one person originated from this land, as our founding fathers migrated to the coasts of the East Coast from Great Britain. For these reason the subject of immigration hits home to many of us. Personally, as a child of two Mexican immigrants, it is a subject met with personal accounts and sympathies for those who tread arduous journeys to reach America, which many see as the “land of dreams”. In his/ her article “Border Hacks: Electronic Civil Disobedience and the Politics of Immigration”, Raley discusses political power in art and media that allow voices of opposition to be heard, despite the quieting by the slanted, political main stream culture. More importantly does Raley emphasize individual power in forming resistance to positions we do not agree with are simply unjust.
With a massive number of “3,500 people [who] are reported dead attempting to cross the United States” (3), it is evident that something must be done with the way the U.S.-Mexico border is dealt with. Although these individuals are attempting to enter this country, their consequences for their actions are not equivalent to the consequence they are given, death. Raley continues to explain that “Minutemen claim the right to make sovereign decisions about friend and enemy” (8). Minutemen are in general right-winged Americans strongly against the ideas of foreigners entering our country, and although this may not encompass the nation’s beliefs, the still hold the power to catch and return people back to their home country. These individuals grasp someone else’s life in their hands – whether or not they achieve their goal of reaching a land where they’re potential matches the opportunities provided, or whether they return to a life of scrounging for jobs at the local tienda(store). Our nation and culture continuously refers to these struggling individuals as ‘Others’ or ‘Aliens’ which in turn deems them “neither alive nor dead, but interminably spectral” (10). As a result, American citizens dismiss the migrants’ human characteristics and lump them together as a bounded society – without looking more in depth into their various experiences that each one of them has. Therefore the “war against terrorism is a war without end will be one that justifies itself endlessly in relation to the spectral infinity of its enemy” (10). As the political continues to dehumanize immigrants and impersonalize their efforts, a resistance by American society will persist because it is as if they are fighting nothing—just another meaningless face of the many.
In order for the whispers of the opposition to become more audible, forms of art and media allow for widespread coverage and personalization. Trebor Scholz and Carol Flax’s hypermedia project, Tuesday Afternoon, “contrasts issue of individually experienced border control” (19) by superimposing a map of the U.S.-Mexico border with a QuickTime video of someone walking along the border, short stories are presented in hypertexual form—from a woman being denied entry to a country after displaying her faulty travel visas, to a women given thirty days to leave the country after her marriage of convenience is nullified. It also estimates where people have fallen to death along the border. All of these accounts allow the large population an opportunity to open their eyes to personal accounts of the dismay and pain that may come along with being denied access to a country. It is not merely a trip back to where you came from, rather it is a shattering of hopes and plans that are extensively made; it is a more comfortable life denied, it is a denial of harnessing one’s potential. In art demonstrations such as this, first person accounts are presented in a way where those not familiar with this kind of exertion can see the disappointment in a migrants face, feel the moment of rejection, and make opinions of their own as to the raw nature of immigrating. This art form encourages “freedom of movement” (18) in that all the hardships would be solved if people were allowed the mere freedom of going where one chooses. It is the “revenge of nomadism over the principle of territory” (23). This idea is a large idea, in that has grand possibilities to it. Why create divisions among the global community? It is a form of separation between races, classes, and ideologies that perhaps creates feuds among nations as we seem to feel that we cannot relate to one another.
Continuing to individualize the process of crossing borders, the Border Film Project gave five hundred people disposable cameras Minutemen and migrants to record their experiences. With images such as migrants walking and Minutemen on the lookout for illegal citizens crossing the border, these images have a “memorializing capacity as well” (28). As the country creates a sense of invisibility for migrants, these photos create a sense of true reality because they are direct representations of the events that happen in life along the border.
It is essential to give separate identities to those people who are courageous enough to attempt to enter this country. Although they are not legally admitted here, they risk their lives and reputations in forging that extensive journey across the long, hazardous journey. By robbing them of their individuality, we rob them of respect as a human being. Would you consider my parents as one of the ‘Other’? As the faceless, bodiless, mindless? Just another immigrant? These art and media projects allow my mother and father to gain their defining features once again. They now become human.