INDEX


"SYNCHRONIZER"


California, 2006
video 15 min

A Baptist pastor opens this video with the question: "I've got a dispute with my neighbour on the property line; well how would Jezus deal with that?"

The House of Representatives bill 4437 (or the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act) was passed in the United States in 2005. It was the catalyst for debates about illegal workers’ and immigrants' rights and the control over the Mexican-US border.

In the early wave of immigrant rights protest, culminating in the huge demonstrations on the 1st of May 2006, a number of Californians was interviewed about their involvement with ‘4437’. Objectors from the left and right (the Latino anti-war movement and the Minutemen vigilante border patrols respectively) as well as law enforcers, talk about personal motivation behind and moral justification of their activities. With an awareness of the complexity of this issue, lines are drawn between morality, patriotism, legal rights and duties and-in more than one sense-borders.

All interviewees are synchonised by a single man. When a job was advertised on a Los Angeles casting website for the synchronisation of a piece on ‘4437’, more than 50 Mexican American actors responded. The synchroniser in this work gives everyone a new voice with a slight Mexican sound.



The synchronised interviewees are involved with:

The Magnolia Baptist Center,
United States Border Patrol (Calexico Border Crossing),
Ontario Airport Police Department, Minutemen Civil Defence Corps, Collectivo Tonantzin (Costa Mesa), Brown Beret Revolutionaries, Hollywood Anti-War Rally,
The March for Peace from Tijuana to San Francisco,
Hollywood Anti-War Rally,
United States Border Patrol (Temecula Checkpoint).

The work was made during a 1-month working period at the Museum of Photography, Riverside, in Southern California.


Watch a short clip:

'latino protester'(11.47 MB)
'border patrol agent'(2.57MB)
'anti-war protester'
(3.36 MB)

INDEX