metaphor content from interviews

My thesis, titled DISPLACED, is a video installation of stories of political exile to be presented at museums, galleries or educational spaces. I have been unable to live an uncommitted or suspended life. I have not hesitated to declare my affiliation with an extremely unpopular cause.” Edward Said It is important for me to use my work as a way to denounce my concerns with the injustices and inequalities that affect the society I live in. My goal for this project is to contribute to the way people understand human experiences different from theirs. This is my opportunity to present exile stories to a mainstream audience that has never been exposed or aware of how humans can be affected by wars. I am using this project to identify a much more personal concentration, the exploration of media as a tool for creating social awareness; to produce art that will bring attention to important issues in a narrative, experimental, educational and visual way. I am interested in how electronic media can be used to present contemporary social issues. My initial prototype for this installation consists of three stories of forced migration. The three stories featured are presented inside of suitcases.  A total of seventeen vintage suitcases painted in a monochromatic color, white. The suitcases I gathered are from the 1940’s and of various sizes; my intention with these suitcases is to represent a visual vocabulary of memories, nostalgia and transit.  I am presenting them in groups of five to six suitcases, stacked on top of each other.  There are three suitcases laid out horizontally on top of the pile equidistance from each other. The top suitcases have large tags with the name of the narrator of the story, the conflict that made them exiles and the year they left their country, i.e. Lariza, Sandinista-Contra War 1989.  INTERACTIVITY Once the viewer opens the suitcase, he or she could view a projection and narrator of the story.  These are divided into shorts of the chronological story organized by topics.  If the viewer closes the suitcase, the next time that a viewer opens it he or she will view and listen to the following segment of the sequence. The videos are close ups of the faces of the narrators as well as family photos and journalistic photos representative of the time periods narrated. The facial expressions help the viewer have that human connection with the story. In between frames there are a variety of both family photos and journalistic photos synched with the narration of the historical moments represented by the photos, all these slowly transitioning in order to portray a memory-like mood.  As I continue to work on theses stories I will include actual footage from the history of those conflicts, which will benefit the memory metaphor of the imagery. The suitcase is a metaphor for traveling as well as for the few precious possessions people bring along with them.  Now, in situations when someone has to escape a country fast without much planning and can only carry what fits in a suitcase, without knowing if he or she could ever return this becomes a very striking element of their transition into exile.  Most people can read the rich symbolism of suitcases, especially since the ones I used have a very distinct vintage style to them.  I am certain that this element of the installation communicates the powerful parallel I want to present.  The white color scheme is used to give the installation a uniformly appeal, allegory to all immigration perceived as statistics, yet you don’t get to understand the experience until you look deeper, inside the suitcases to try to understand what these stories are all about.