concluding the future:

TITLE:
The future: not just a walk in the desert:

ABSTRACT:
“Not just a walk in the desert” is an interactive intervention art (1) experience – A travel experience, a tour, that engages with cell phones, video documentation. Edited versions of the videos will be posted onto the internet and then sent back to the travelers and to those with acccess to cell phone pods, for all to consume. I propose that this interactive, travel event, that traipses over existing, illegal immigrant trails, can promote an alternate linkage to the words ‘illegal alien’. An awareness wil be highlighted, where the public tourist has a private experience. Redefining the symbolic representations of the words illegal alien through a immersive experience. The use of video and pods cycles back into the experience, becoming a public document a new avatar to represent the illegal alien.

This very private, real act, of an illegal alien crossing the border is a private experience but a public problem. The illegal alien has become an avatar that is defined and mediated by new media and technology.
“Crime, murder, illegal drugs, missing kids, illegal aliens”
http://www.foxnews.com/national/crime/index.html

Illegal aliens 'not illegal'
www.worldnetdaily.com/weekinreview.asp

``The only reason a lot of employers want to hire a large number of illegal aliens is so they can exploit them.''
www.commondreams.org/headlines/021700-02.htm

A travel experience as art, is probing that provides “ the conditions to mobilize the signifier in the service of an alternative production” (12) The traveler, the internet viewers and cellphone users become modest witnesses. (Harraway) (wortex 2)

Introduction:
Extreme travel, reality TV, video documenting and their posting on the internet, is a preoccupation of today’s American culture. The American People have a history with the illegal alien, from The Sedition Act of 1798 (see wortex 4) through to the LA protest about immigration reform in 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_United_States_immigration_reform_protests) The words illegal alien are a derogatory term, that applies to over 10 million people in the States today. My art project, is about using the very tools that exploit the ‘other’ to redefine the illegal alien. These are the everyday items that combine to inform and manipulate our public perceptions about who the illegal alien (wortex 4) Through interactivity disguised as a travel event, the participant creates a space where they can revitalize and recreate the identity of the illegal immigrant. By using the performative, engaging with everyday and networking technology I will create a rupture. A folding over of information, where the system that informs, informs on its self, exposing its own bias.

Imagine the ultimate travel destination. A real travel experience, that is dangerous, unpredictable, physically and environmentally extreme. An experience that is technologically savy, exciting, informed and allows the participant to be politically active. Not just a walk in the dessert.

For my future work as an artist, I propose a travel adventure that will take the adventurer on the illegal, desert, border crossings from Mexico into America Crossing the border from Mexico into America by illegal aliens is the norm in the eyes of the American public. We hear about the issue from politicians like Bush who in his 2007 State of the Nation speech stated that [he] “Will Call On Congress To Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” It was recorded that the “President believes that America can simultaneously be a lawful, economically dynamic, and welcoming society. We must address the problem of illegal immigration and deliver a system that is secure, productive, orderly, and fair. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2007/initiatives/immigration.html)

Arnold Schwarzenegger the Californian Governor was quoted on Monday that he proposed an extending health care coverage to all of California's 36 million residents as part of a sweeping package of changes to the state's huge, troubled health care system.

A total of 6.5 million people, one-fifth of the state's population, do not have health insurance, far more than in any other state. At least one million of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, state officials say. “there is even a debate about what he said with regards to immigrants on YouTube). Wednesday, 29 August 2007
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A0CE6D61530F93AA35752C0A9619C8B63

Media is all pervasive. On television the illegal alien is seen through the form of the documentary. ‘Crossing the line’: The documentary shows the minutemen squarely in the white power circles
The People Confront Racist Minutemen in Sacramento
http://santacruz.indymedia.org/mod/comments/display/22389/index.php

Web sites have been set up for personal and professional reasons about the illegal alien: http://www.illegalaliens.us/nationalsites.htm . This site, besides mocking the term undocumented, is an illegal immigration primer whose goal is to provide information on illegal immigration prevention, enforcement, and attrition.

Or http://www.humaneborders.org/
Humane Borders, motivated by faith, offers humanitarian assistance to those in need through more than 70 emergency water stations on and near the U.S.-Mexican border.

Utube post illegal alien videos such as Illegal Aliens Caught At Border http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn9nlyJaGC8&mode=related&search=
This is a video response to Border Cameras and High Tech Failure to Capture Illegal Aliens
Or Dangerous crossing at the border originally screened on Current TV gives small snippets of information like crossing arizona: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfCaIdJa6fE&mode=related&search=

Books have been written: – Enrique’s journey by Sonia Nazario
http://www.enriquesjourney.com/

Movies distributed such A Day Without a Mexican (2004)
One day California wakes up and not a single Latino is left in the state. They have all inexplicably dissappeared, chaos, tragedy, and comedy quickly ensue.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377744/,
Babel, 2006 where the nanny Amelia is in a bit of a bind, because she expected the parents home so she could attend the wedding of her son in Mexico. With Richard and Susan not returning soon, and with no one else available to watch the children, she takes them with her to the wedding across the border.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449467/)

Newspapers describe the illegal alien through headlines, images and footage of illegal immigration border crossings.
(http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/01/24/borderguards060124.html)

But they are disconnected, representations of the actual journey and the people, The illegal alien is a commodity and I am interested in using the way it is mediated into a productive real art experience.

The illegal alien is a terrorist.
The illegal alien is a father
The illegal alien is a young child
The illegal alien is a worker
The illegal alien a drug runner or coyote
The illegal alien is a wife, mother or girl
The illegal alien is a political refugee
The illegal alien is a person
The illegal alien was me

The illegal alien described by the dictionary –noun
1. a foreigner who has entered or resides in a country unlawfully or without the country's authorization.
2. a foreigner who enters the U.S. without an entry or immigrant visa, esp. a person who crosses the border by avoiding inspection or who overstays the period of time allowed as a visitor, tourist, or businessperson.

The illegal immigrant is an extension of technology. The illegal immigrant is tracked, counted, documented and digitalized. This forming of the illegal immigrant through and by technology has created an avatar that is reuseable, and can be reimagined whenever the machinations of power need to push an agenda.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060515-8.html
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. I've asked for a few minutes of your time to discuss a matter of national importance -- the reform of America's immigration system.

The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions, and in recent weeks, Americans have seen those emotions on display. On the streets of major cities, crowds have rallied in support of those in our country illegally. At our southern border, others have organized to stop illegal immigrants from coming in. Across the country, Americans are trying to reconcile these contrasting images. And in Washington, the debate over immigration reform has reached a time of decision. Tonight, I will make it clear where I stand, and where I want to lead our country on this vital issue.

For my future research I propose that by using travel as an interactive art process, we can inform and redirect discourse. Through the event, the technology of streaming video, cell phones, internet and pods the illegal alien can be reimagined. Not as a threat, not as a problem, not as an avatar to be used, but as a human being. I intend to redefine the space of the Illegal alien by using everyday contemporary technology such as cell phones, e-mail, video editing, pods and the internet.

Travel and the internet are voyeuristic devices that enable us to look at things and spaces from a distance. We can make up you own stories, narratives and memories. They are built up through the distancing that technology imposses. But that distance is what I want to facilitate communication and discourse. Like the Art Historica in Chile (wortex 5) or the video mediation in Italy (2) My art uses the video as a less confrontational form of communication. Technology as a mediator can be used positively. The distancing from reality is less confrontational, yet the travel over the desert is a real interactive experience that informs reality.

NOTES:
Productive forms of video mediation are popping up everywhere:
Daily Texan
9/22/05
Groups watch Minutemen documentary
By Kathy Adams
People on both sides of the issue sat together and watched a documentary about the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, a group of volunteers who patrol the border for illegal immigrants.
http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2005/09/22/University/Groups.Watch.Minutemen.Documentary-994511.shtml

Today Utube is creating a space where you can see people posting videos in response to other videos

Coco Fusco uses the immersive nature of the real experience in her piece Operation “A piece that explored similiar issues of torture was Operation Atropos.In July 2005, I took a course led by former US military interrogators designed for people in the private sector who want to learn their techniques for extracting information. I took a group of six women with me and filmed our workshop.”
http://www.wenited.org/read/index.php?catid=12
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/arts/design/30fusc.html?ex=1306641600&en=c5fff6f1c4084a36&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss


bibliography:

1. There are works, that is objects or actions, that are emblematic of the social problem or make a political statement.
Supportive works that are conceived of and created by the artist that, upon presentation, are designed to be linked to others, ultimately feed back into an actual social system.
http://hybrid.concordia.ca/~dart_projects/publicart/artinterv.html

http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/illegalimm.html

2. Pelizza, Annalisa 2007 Qua_SI Quality of Life in the Information Society Ph.D. Program University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy
Technology was used to mediated co..... were videoed about their ideas on the urban space. A video was then beamed over a video wall placed in one of the same contested squares, thus making the terms of the disputes among space users accessible by communities and individuals involved in the struggle as well as passers-by. The boundaries-generating discourse was thus made visible and audible and was embedded in the same contested space by means of the digital layer provided by the video screen. deeply imbricated in an image of the city made of multiple spatial- temporal layers. On the one hand, the process of accumulation of traces of ‘dirtiness’ – through direct or mediated experience – could be seen as acting as a temporal link, similarly to a back- forward technique, and as a mechanism recalling other spatial orders.