<nettime> Tableau vivant summer holidays 2009, number 1: Caribbean Paradise Tragedy

[Tjebbe van Tijen <tjebbe@imaginarymuseum.org>]

The first of an upcoming series of 'tableaux vivants' for the summer  
holidays of the year 2009

The introduction text + link to the original web page can be found  
via my weblog The Limping Messenger.

A week ago there was yet another news item on a disaster with Haitian  
boat migrants of the Caicos Islands in the midst of what is for many  
people the period of their summer holidays. Over one hundred people  
drowned in the water of what is elsewhere often described as a  
Caribbean Paradise. Recently I have started to study (again) the  
migration question as I may construct a mobile monument on the theme  
migration without borders somewhere this year...and so I had  
discovered some video footage at the web site of the American Coast  
Guard ? dating back to 2007 ? showing a primitive overloaded sailing  
boat full of migrants in full sea. The video footage is just after  
first contact between the migrant-boat and the coast guard and as a  
standard precaution procedure swimming vests are given to all boat  
people first. So what you see in the work below is already a tiny bit  
more safe as the actual situation with a boat full of people without  
any safety equipment and many who can not swim.

What gripped me the most was that the people on the boat ? in spite  
of having been discovered and under threat to be send back ? were all  
singing to a rhythm beaten on a djembe drum. And in my mind?s eye I  
combined this scene with the promising imagery of tourist flyers.  
What can be seen on the simple documented web page made for this  
purpose is but a primitive rendering of such a vision?

You can click the image above to see the first of a series of  
holidays 2009 ?tableaux vivants?: ?caribbean Paradise Tragedy?.

http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/699/

Tjebbe van Tijen
Imaginary Museum Projects
Dramatizing Historical Information
http://imaginarymuseum.org
web-blog: The Limping Messenger
http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/


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