MAKE NICE
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WEEK FOUR:
CHITRA GANESH
(VIDEOBOX) Mariam Ghani
JULY 27th - JULY 31st
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 28th 6-8 pm
Curated by Melissa Chiu, Director, Asia Society
In the collaborative
project Seeing the Disappeared, Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani
explore the issue of post - 9/11 detentions to consider how Bush administration
policies justify and sanction violence against immigrant communities --
with the intent of adding a charge of specific, individual humanity to
the public discussion of an issue, detention and deportation, that remains
all too abstract for most Americans.
Chitra Ganesh's installation and public art project Seeing the Disappeared
takes the format of the "missing person" flyers that covered
lampposts and subway stations during and after 9/11 and applies it to
narratives of post-9/11 detention and deportation. The project circulates
accounts of disappearance, gathered from human rights initiatives working
with detainees and media coverage, paired with sketched and painted portraits
blurred as if by over-reproduction to highlight the precarious situation
of those targeted by the government's anti-immigrant legislation. Seeing
the Disappeared responds to the lack of discussion around detainee issues
both in 2004 election politics and in popular critiques of the Bush administration
such as Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
Mariam Ghani's video How Do You See The Disappeared? introduces
and prepares the web project of the same name, which will launch in November,
by analyzing current immigration law, a decade of case histories, and
media coverage of detention & deportation within an experimental framework
that questions how the language of the system is implicated in the disappearances
it produces. The web project How Do You See The Disappeared? A
Warm Database seeks to counteract the dehumanizing effects of post-9/11
mass detentions and deportations on our immigrant communities by creating
a "warm" database of the individual dreams, desires and disappointments
of the detainees usually presented by the government in the stark, anonymous
light of "cold, hard facts" gathered secretly and by force.
By making the Warm Database available on the Internet, How Do You See
The Disappeared? will restore to the public dialogue on this issue
the specific individuality of people who have been targeted, isolated
and criminalized as groups by current immigration policy and debate.
Anyone who has been affected by detention and deportation is invited to
participate in the project by filling out (on their own behalf or on behalf
of a family member in proceedings) a voluntary, anonymous questionnaire
at: http://www.turbulence.org/Works/ghani/submit