Disappeared in America Aug 5 NYC

Friday, August 5, 2005 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm

*5:00 PM**: DISAPPEARED IN **AMERICA** exhibition (VISIBLE Collective)

*Exhibiting from August 5 through August 30

Since 9-11, thousands of Muslim immigrants were detained in a security dragnet. The majority of those detained were from the invisible underclbutt of cities like New York. They are the recent immigrants who drive our taxis, deliver our food, clean our restaurant tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers. The only time we see their faces are when we glance at the hack license in the taxi parbreastion, or the ID card around the neck of a vendor.

Already invisible in our cities, after detention, they have become "ghost prisoners." In this, there are eerie parallels to past witch-hunts, including the 1919 detention of 10,000 immigrants after anarchists planted the Attorney General's home; the 1941 internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans; the trial and end of the Rosenbergs; and the blacklisting spurred by HUAC and Joseph McCarthy's Senate committee. While our work started in the American context, we have expanded to look at Europe, in recognition that anti-immigrant xenophobia, coupled with Islamophobia (a more acceptable shorthand for "dark mbuttes"), is not a new or uniquely American phenomenon.

VISIBLE, is a collective of Muslim and other Artist-Activists, that created the DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA project. DISAPPEARED is a walk-through installation that uses film, soundscape, images, installations and lectures to humanize the faces of post 9-11 "disappeared" Muslims. It is also a traveling, multimedia lecture that has been shown in Stuttgart (with Walid Raad-Atlas Group), London (with Otolith Group), New York (Queens Museum of Art), Stockholm (Finnish Embbutty), Helsinki (Kiasma Museum) and other cities.

The following review was written by Ben Davis while the installation was at the Queens Museum of Art:

The name of the group is Visible. Their installation is enbreastled "Disappeared in America." There is something powerful about the insistence of the theme of visibility in the words the group uses, as if urgently repeating a message. The installation appears as part of the Queens Museum of Art's current "bane Love" show, an exhibition that highlights the works of South Asian artists. "Disappeared in America," however, has a life all its own. Physically, it has a presence that dominates, the tension between its various multimedia components--including film presentations, soundscapes, and multimedia sculpture-building the sense of an urgent conversation that the viewer must participate in. Conceptually, it has a range that goes beyond the walls of the museum. The Visible collective that put the work together is an buttociation of some fifteen artists, writers and thinkers, united around a common cause: raising awareness about the effects of the post-9-11 crack-down that has threatened the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans.

Visible's Naeem Mohaiemen explains that the seed of the project began with a film project on a Pakistani man detained after 9-11, screened at Rooftop Films' "Against Empire" festival. However, there was a sense of dissatisfaction with the results, both in terms of the audience reactions, and in terms of a sense of "preaching to the choir." "We were not able to convey all the complexities of the post 9-11 crackdown," Mohaiemen recounts. "So we wanted to expand into a film trilogy and multimedia installation, which would use photos, text, objects, sounds, etc. to sketch the contours of an entire community that is disappearing. We also wanted to place it in a very democratic museum space, which would get many people who would not otherwise ever come to a work of political art."

The artists knew that their efforts had to be not only humanizing, but to find ways to make their political message visceral and involving to a wider audience. For example, of the three video pieces in the show, "Patriot Story" is a poetic meditation, layering a voiceover of one detained man over stark, floating images of streetscapes. Another film piece enbreastled "Lingering: Twenty," on the other hand, takes an almost comic view of the situation, focusing on the surreal idea of people simply "disappearing" from their lives."The problem here is multi-dimensional and so the representation of this spectrum of experiences had to be multifaceted," Sehban Zaidi explained.

This nuanced approach to their theme crystallizes in what is in many ways the centerpiece of "Disappeared in America," a sculptural work composed of two light boxes, covered in rice. As viewers interact with the piece, brushing aside the rice, they uncover two texts. One is the names of the disappeared. The other is made of various legal texts that have been used to detain them.This work nicely allegorizes what Visible hopes to accomplish with its work: to induce people to become involved in the quest to bring visibility to the hidden forces that affect Muslim-Americans.

*****

7:00 pm: Panel Discussion on Arts and Activism in Age of Crisis

*****

8:00 pm: Fundraiser: America's Civil Liberties Crisis: Respond with Music and Solidarity!

FUNDRAISER FOR TWO TEENAGERS UNJUSTLY DETAINED AND ACCUSED OF BEING A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY:

**Tashnuba Hyder (Bangladesh): detained and deported with family **Adama Bah (Guinea): detained and eventually released, all charges dropped

Former detainee Adama Bah (see The New York Times, 7-25-05) Family and friends of Tashnuba and Adama talk about the case

Followed by a Multicultural Extravaganza including:

**Bengali musicians from the Bangladeshi Insbreastute of performing Arts **Guinean musicians (Ahmadou Bah and others) **Clbuttical Musicians Including pianist tomoya kano **Clbuttical Indian Dance (Samita of KAASH) **Spoken word artists, Others TBA; Film Clips

For more information, contact iamourhaj at aol.com or call or (917) 602-4450

All proceeds will be divided by the two families!

Emergency Families Fund-CAIR c-o 9-11 Relief Program-Adem Carroll 166-26 89 Avenue Jamaica, New York 11432

Donations are tax exempt

- -- toplab at toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." ~ --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are prevailing." ~ --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

U.S. military baneities through May 1, 2003: 140 U.S. military baneities through June 28, 2005: 1743 U.S. military baneities as of July 29, 2005: 1791

Iraqi civilian baneities through May 1, 2003: 1982 Iraqi civilian baneities through June 28, 2005: 22,563 ? 25,560 (estimated) Iraqi civilian baneities as of July 29, 2005: 23,006 ? 26,052 (estimated)

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