Filmmaker bristles over Australia's barring of North Korean artists

Five painters had been commissioned to produce works for the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art show in Queensland. Their paintings will be there, but they won't.

Reporting from Seoul - Nick Bonner has a cautionary tale about propaganda, censorship and North Korea. But it's not what you think, he says.The British filmmaker and art dealer had helped commission five North Korean painters to produce works for an Australian art exhibit, inviting them to come and talk about their craft and inspiration.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-north-korea-artists11-2009dec11,0,16131.story

Send Us Your Tired, Your Poor, But Only if They're 'Culturally Unique'

Immigration Caseworker AA0089 Has Some Thoughts About What Is Art

By MIRIAM JORDAN
LOS ANGELES -- When Jordan Peimer booked an Argentine band that fuses Jewish Klezmer music with tango, he thought he had the perfect act to headline his "Fiesta Hanukkah" concert.
"It is hard to imagine any band more fitting than Orquesta Kef," says Mr. Peimer, the program's director at the Skirball Cultural Center here. The event was designed to attract a Jewish audience and the city's burgeoning Hispanic community.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126040747425984693.html

Judge gives border activist time to think

A federal magistrate on Friday gave a border activist two weeks to think about his decision not to comply with a sentence for leaving water jugs on a wildlife preserve.

http://www.gvnews.com/articles/2009/12/04/breaking_news/00staton.txt

FOLLOW THE GPS, ÉSE The Transborder Immigrant Tool Helps Mexicans Cross Over Safely

Ricardo Dominguez is very happy that the Border Patrol considers him a nuisance. (Photo by Brett Stalbaum)http://bang.calit2.net/xborder/

May Day 2006

Walking a mile in an immigrant's moccasins

Ben Reed married Deyanira Escalona in Mexico after she was deported at LAX while en route to their planned wedding in Idaho. They live in Mexico now. "I've been radicalized by the whole experience," Reed says.

Ben Reed was once a conservative shock jock in his native Idaho. But meeting and falling in love with a Mexican national brought about a change in philosophy. They now live in Mexico.

By Hector Tobar

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tobar3-2009nov03,0,1602661.column
November 2, 2009 9:16 p.m.

Don't count illegal immigrants? That doesn't add up

Like other efforts to make them non-people, a proposal to exclude them from the 2010 census doesn't do anything to deal with the problem.
By Gregory Rodriguez

Los Angeles Times
November 2, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez2-2009nov02,0,7973696.column

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ERASED

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ERASED
NATASCHA SADR HAGHIGHIAN and ASHLEY HUNT


ASHLEY HUNT’S MAPS THEORIZE HOW PRISONERS IN A DOMESTIC CONTEXT, AND REFUGEES IN AN "EXTRA-NATIONAL" CONTEXT, COMPOSE A GROWING BODY OF STATELESS PERSONS, UPON WHOSE ERASURE AND MARGINALIZATION GLOBAL AFFLUENCE AND NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM ARE BUILT. IN CONVERSATION WITH NATASCHA SADR HAGHIGHIAN HE TALKS ABOUT IMAGES THAT CREATE INVISIBILITIES AND ABOUT HOW THEORIZING INTERRELATIONSHIPS AND DYNAMICS BETWEEN STATES AND INDIVIDUALS, IDEAS, LAWS, ORGANIZATIONS, HISTORIES, FORCES AND PROCESSES CAN HELP VISUALIZE THESE INVISIBILITIES.
http://www.16beavergroup.org/ashley/ahunt_3.pdf

This is Not Me

This is Not Me
1,000 found unaltered photo fragments, archival plastic sleeves
2005 - ongoing




Over the last few years, the artist team Lin + Lam have collected hundreds of abandoned ID card photo remainders. Together these photographs represent to them a collectivity of 'non-identities': the people amongst us who are caught between visibility and invisibility. At once sad and comic, the faceless testify to the violence that severs individual selves into anonymous categories, such as "migrant," "undocumented," "alien," "refugee," "stateless."
According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the term "stateless person" refers to one who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law. The Webopedia Computer Dictionary defines "stateless" as "having no information about what occurred previously." A stateless server, such as the World Wide Web, treats each request as an independent transaction without requiring any context or memory.
This is Not Me points to negation--as it exists in ourselves and at the hands of the bureaucratic state apparatus. Such negation arises at the very moment of a double recognition--self-recognition and recognition of the erasure of other bodies in the socio-political landscape.
http://www.linpluslam.com/this.htm

Teatro Indocumentado

After the largest immigration raid in history at a meat-packing plant in Iowa last year, several undocumented workers await deportation. While in limbo these men are reenacting their stories on stage.

http://www.studio360.org/go.py?r=http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2009/09/25

This is a 10' x 20' mural about diversity in Los Angeles that I have been commissioned to create for LAANE - a Los Angeles non profit headed by former immigration attorney Madeline Janis

Satisfied customer Peter Byck sports a Todd Becraft "t."

A father of three United States citizen children awaits an interview at U.S.C.I.S. Family unity is a major issue in the immigration debate in the United States.

North Korean Asylum

In 2006, I worked with the Human Rights Project and attorney Judith Wood, to obtain the first grant of political asylum under the North Korean Human Rights Act. These cases are difficult because South Korea claims North Koreans as citizens and as a result the U.S. Immigration Court considers these refugees as "firmly resettled" in a third country - a bar to asylum in the United States.