We believe that good storytelling strengthens social movements, so every year we want to select stories from Resist to turn into films.
We asked people to upload their stories of resistance and spoke with many activists, writers and political thinkers.
Using what we learnt, we’ve chosen to make our first film with the actor Gael Garcia Bernal
We’ve spent the last few months focusing on the Wall that is being built along the entire USA border with Mexico. It is one of the greatest symbols of the divisions between rich and poor, and inspires a major investigation into the systemic causes of poverty and migration.
We’ve followed the death of one migrant and are currently seeking funding to expand the film to expose a global network of new Walls and the divisive impact they will have on all of our futures.
(The video is not part of “Altar” – but I thought it would add
to the remix borders that grow from her work).
McALLEN — As a swell of African, Indian, Russian and Balkan migration seemed to turn her hometown at the heel of Italy into a zone of hostility, Paola Zaccaria came upon quotations of a Tex-Mex mestiza — Gloria Anzaldúa.
Zaccaria, a professor who specializes in America, saw the parallels.
She herself had students who were children of migrants and lost between two worlds. She lived where the third world grated against the first. Migrants were dying in rickety boats. Laws were being passed to keep them out. Detention centers were being built.
She traveled to the United States to meet Anzaldúa, a self-described “Chicana-queer” writer who’s widely credited with validating the conflicted border identity. Zaccaria translated Anzaldúa’s 1987 book “Borderlands/La Frontera” into Italian.
In 2008, four years after Anzaldúa’s death, she and director Daniele Basilio filmed “Altar,” a montage of video and still imagery, music and voice meant as a tribute to the dialogue Anzaldúa started.
DUBLINERS
“La isla que
se repite”:
dub liners,
el Caribe.
Derridian
hospitality,
Joycean as
a “Yes,” resounding.
Video exhibited in ‘Space is the Place’ exhibition at the Gallery of the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, as part of the program of ISEA 2009 which takes place in Belfast and Dublin Ireland this year. The exhibition will run from the 27th August – 1st September 2009.
Text of poems: Amy Sara Carroll Video poems design: Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cárdenas, and Elle Mehrmand Voices included in the poems: Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Césaire Carroll-Dominguez, Patrick Carroll, and Ricardo Dominguez Collaborative inspiration: Brett Stalbaum
PRECESSION (An Irish Blessing)
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.”
May your tracks cut a poem—
the shortest distance—
between points A and B.
The earth on its axis resembles a spinning top.
The North Star (of the stars) most closely aligns
itself with the earth’s axis. Hence, a constant
changes over time, reassembling the circuit: Polaris, Vega, Thuban, Alpha Cephei.
May you catch your bearing, the truth of true
North against its pasts and futures’ constellating.
Mano Poderosa/mano negra: “May God hold
you in the palm of His hand.”
Video exhibited in ‘Space is the Place’ exhibition at the Gallery of the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, as part of the program of ISEA 2009 which takes place in Belfast and Dublin Ireland this year. The exhibition will run from the 27th August – 1st September 2009.
Text of poems: Amy Sara Carroll
Video poems design: Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cárdenas, and Elle Mehrmand Voices included in the poems: Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Césaire Carroll-Dominguez, Patrick Carroll, and Ricardo Dominguez Collaborative inspiration: Brett Stalbaum
AL-KHWĀRIZMĪ
Algorithm, algo rhythmic:
broken as
a line
rescripts a
continent.
Video exhibited in ‘Space is the Place’ exhibition at the Gallery of the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, as part of the program of ISEA 2009 which takes place in Belfast and Dublin Ireland this year. The exhibition will run from the 27th August – 1st September 2009.
Text of poems: Amy Sara Carroll
Video poems design: Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cárdenas, and Elle Mehrmand
Voices included in the poems: Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Césaire Carroll-Dominguez, Patrick Carroll, and Ricardo Dominguez
TRANSITION
(song of my cells)
Gloria Anzaldúa writes, “We have a tradition of migration, a tradition of long walks. Today we are witnessing la migración de los pueblos mexicanos, the return odyssey to the historical/mythological Aztlán” (1999 [1987]: 33). The historical? The mythological? Aztlán? It’s difficult to follow the soundings of that song. Today’s borders and circuits speak at “lower frequencies,” are “shot through with chips of Messianic time.” Might (O chondria!): imagine the chips’ transliteralization and you have “arrived” at the engines of a global positioning system—the transitivity of the Transborder Immigrant Tool. Too: when you outgrow that definition, look for the “trans-” of transcendental -isms, imperfect as overwound pocketwatches, “off”-beat as subliminalities (alternate forms of energy which exceed Reason’s predetermined star maps). Pointedly past Walden-pondering, el otro lado de flâneur-floundering—draw a circle, now “irse por la tangente”—neither gray nor grey (nor black-and-white). Arco-iris: flight, a fight. Of fancy. This Bridge Called my Back, my heart, my head, my cock, my cunt, my tunnel. Vision: You. Are. Crossing. Into. Me.
Video exhibited in ‘Space is the Place’ exhibition at the Gallery of the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, as part of the program of ISEA 2009 which takes place in Belfast and Dublin Ireland this year. The exhibition will run from the 27th August – 1st September 2009.
Text of poems: Amy Sara Carroll
Video poems design: Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cárdenas, and Elle Mehrmand
Voices included in the poems: Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Césaire Carroll-Dominguez, Patrick Carroll, and Ricardo Dominguez
The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) is a small group of artivists
engaged in developing the theory and
practice of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD)
