Babli's Creative Response 3- Borders Resurfacing

Here is my creative response.....

I also did not feel like choreographing or creating movements.

Borders assignment 3 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Password: Immigrationrecords


As you give feedback, I would like you to consider that there are a few things I experimented with but could not do right this moment, because I would have needed a different video set-up. If it makes sense to re-do this or expand this/change this in the future, I might like to play with that (or not, or something different....)

1)  work with more hastas
2) mark the hands - maybe mehendi?

Shy's Borders Resurfacing Response 3: Familial migration documents

My Father’s name squeezes itself neatly into the tiny box, whose creator didn’t anticipate the Jagarlapudis with all our extra names.

Birthplace:  India.

The box for “color or race” is not filled out.  

 Instead, I happily observe, it contains a single horizontal line as if to mark the very category itself irrelevant.

43 years later, my year-and-a-half old son, soon to get his passport, perches curiously on a stool, pointing at the camera flash.

We love the smiley picture, but the elderly black man who runs the dingy store, warns us that the rules have changed:  no smiling.

We choose the one where he looks puzzled instead.   

He is wearing his favorite color, orange, unaware of how this color is infamously linked to the 45^th president of the United States.  Unaware of the president’s attempts at travel bans.  Unaware that the world’s borders are tightening and that he may never experience the freedom that I have enjoyed with my American passport and my Overseas Indian Citizenship.

This ¾ desi child who knows more Spanish than Gujarati, who loves Bollywood music and salsa and who, like any almost two-year-old, simultaneously tests boundaries and clings to security.  And like every almost two-year-old, he knows you don’t need a big wall to feel safe, just a smile and a welcoming embrace.   

Borders Resurfacing Residency (Los Angeles)

Today Shy and I had a one day mini-residency working on Borders Resurfacing in LA.  We started in the morning with a Skype check-in with Meena and Sandra, who were in Philadelphia and Munich.  Meena left after we worked out some important logistics, and Sandra, Shy and I continued chatting to help formulate Shyamala's and my creative tasks for the day.  Together, we decided that Shy and I would make another phrase remixing other people's material together in the studio.  In addition, we shared some stories about troubles with border crossings, including people caught in Trump's travel ban, and decided that Shy and I would create some new movement based on these stories.

Here is the new remixed phrase that Shyamala and I created together.
password: remix

Remix Phrase (Shy solo)

We also played with putting it together as a canon.  We envisioned that it could be interesting to do as an ensemble of bodies in uneven canons, creating an ebb and flow of people trying to cross borders, encountering obstacles, being sent away.  Perhaps a soundscape consisting of excerpts of the border trouble stories could accompany the phrase, with parts of the stories comprehensible and parts not, with the overall effect of oceanic ebb and flow.

password: remix

Remix Phrase (duet)

For our movement inspired by stories of trouble crossing borders, we ended up creating "Border Sawal Jawab":
password: ACLU

Border Sawal Jawab

This study is based on the story of Hina Shamsi, an ACLU lawyer with a Pakistani passport and US green card who was stopped and questioned in the aftermath of Trump's travel ban. With a few modifications and additions for clarity and theatrical impact, most of the actual questions were taken verbatim from Shamsi's description of her "second screening" interrogation.  And I was inspired by Meena's earlier explorations doing footwork to Fred Moten's words!

For reference, here is Shamsi's story:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/flying-home-abroad-border-agent-stopped-and-questioned-me-about-my-work-aclu
You can also hear the story in her voice on the following "Intercepted" podcast (listen from 20:43-24:23):
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/15/intercepted-podcast-we-are-all-in-trumps-hunger-games-now/

And here are some of the other "border trouble" stories that we shared with each other during our Skype discussion:

• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/20/british-muslim-teacher-denied-entry-to-us-on-school-trip
• https://www.artforum.com/news/id=66941
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/26/grandmother-deported-from-uk-despite-being-married-to-briton-for-27-years
• http://www.dw.com/en/deported-afghans-dream-of-returning-to-germany/a-37352655
• https://codastory.com/migration-crisis/geopolitical-ruptures/an-opera-singer-takes-the-stage-and-confronts-deportation
• https://codastory.com/migration-crisis/news/update-celebrity-musician-and-asylum-seeker-back-in-afghanistan-following-deportation