The Circus of (Im)Migration video documentation

Watch the 40 minute video documentation of the circus here:

The Circus of (Im)Migration

High quality version, 1.05GB
http://sdhacklab.org/circus-of-immigration-big.mov

Low quality web version, 240MB
http://sdhacklab.org/The-Circus-of-ImMigration-web.mov

The Circus of (Im)Migration took place in the spring of 2007. The traveling circus was an uncircus performed by the Boredom Patrol of the Clanestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and volunteers and workshop participants in seven cities: Olympia, WA; Portland, OR; Eugene, OR; Berkeley, CA; San Francisco, CA; Santa Cruz, CA; and San Diego, CA. The performance consisted of 3 acts: act one about the circus, act two about our personal stories about borders and act three about the immigration raids taking place around the US. Over 750 people were deported through raids on homes on workplaces in April alone. In between the acts, the following youtube videos were shown:

Clowns vs. Minutemen Pt.2 Operation More Secure than Depends
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7rONLxzAA4

REAL Alien Invasion of “Our Minutemen” at a Home Depot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ59rvPGe_4

The third act took the form of the Theater of the Oppressed forum theater, where audience members were invited to join the performance and change the outcome of the scene.

Our attempt was to create an interactive, communal, openly participatory space for dialog about immigration, migration control, borders and freedom of movement. We see this practice in the tradition of using humor against fascism, as a way to open up dialog within a climate of fear and repression, with the hope that this dialog and laughter can be healing. Further, we are using the inbetween space of the clown, with our faces hidden and revealed by greasepaint, inbetween genders, ethnicities, roles, in order to challenge the rigid conceptions of identity, nationality and citizenship that underlie the rhetoric around immigration.

The circus was also organized with the hope of spreading the word about the No Borders Camp in Calexico/Mexicali and also with growing the network of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army to spread all over the country. We could not have done this circus without all the help from the amazing network of community organizers, artists and community spaces who we worked with. Thank you.

More information, photos and video at http://circasd.org