Palestinian artist at Mexico/US border: 'Can I jump?' | Crossing the line

against the backdrop of the u.s presidential elections we are 10 middle eastern artists who have embarked on a 20 000 mile road trip across one of the most contested ideological borders of our time that of the united states and the middle east our vehicle is a 34 foot 1999 golf stream rv which we have transformed into a mobile artist studio and our mission is to create artwork that explores common concerns while creating spontaneous encounters across these divisive borders how would you do the literature okay how do you take 11 million people and make a lead fine you'll do it it's all a package number one we're going to build a wall it's going to be a real wall it's going to be a wall that's powerful and that people aren't going to be going under or up or around or anything else first of all when i went to tijuana i saw this ugly wall going inside the sea from the beach inside the sea and this makes me so angry can i i am an artist trying to understand the system of the border control between mexico and america and this one it has no name on it so maybe i thought about these ones the ones that they have no names what do you think john because they were reporting so who's there reporting they're saying there's people here they think we may cross uh-huh that's why he was asking to for that it's coming no i can't explain to them so here is here when i was like talking to people and seeing the wall it's remind me also with the wall in palestine the world in palestine came as an idea of separation and humiliation and control so to tell that story i took pieces i transformed these pieces to an art objects where i could exhibit them but i will not accept this wall to be in my face my mission is to show that this is not not real i was thinking about this big object and about the waste of milton and land and the people who died while crossing the borders and i am so fascinated by the idea of transforming this object to something more practical and more useful when you're a kid like one person sits on my season this to change the functional use of this object from separating people to something that brings people together as afraid so it could be as a as a monument this ladder as a monument somewhere to where people can most see for drugs which aren't going to do people much good but it seems to me from what i've seen that the least bad way to control it is before i came to the border between united states and mexico i thought that i could talk about this obstacle but this world is oriented within people's minds we need to break and make holes in this world to be able to see what's beyond to be a witness to the total transformation of the city in the last 30 years it's so extraordinary really

Channel: Guardian Culture

Views: 877,083

Keywords: palestine, israel, apartheid, wall, build a wall, build the wall, donald trump, trump, trump wall, mexico, mexicans, mexican, palestinian, art, israeli, san diego, tijuana, tiajuana, culturunners, Khaled Jarrar, usa, unites states, trump 2016, racism, racist, drumpf, bernie sanders, politics, muslim, jerusalem, separation wall, barack obama, border wall, mexico border wall, trump border wall, immigration, trump 2020, trump wall news, mexico wall, us wall, hillary clinton, child separations, 2019

Id: JYNkKaKoAjw

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 04 2016