December 14, 2004
Turbulence Commission: "How Do You See the Disappeared? A Warm Database"
by Mariam Ghani, et al
http://turbulence.org/works/seethedisappeared
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"How Do You See the Disappeared? A Warm Database" investigates
immigrants who disappear into the complex, bewildering, and often
heartless bureaucracy that governs the immigration courts, detention
centers, asylum adjudications, and deportation proceedings that separate
hundreds of thousands of new Americans each year from their everyday
lives, family ties, and points of connection.

The web-based phase of this project has four interrelated branches: "How
Do You See the Disappeared?" is a hypertext sequence which leads the
viewer on a search for traces of the disappeared in the documents which
surround and enclose them, in order to analyze how the language of the
system enables and doubles the disappearances it produces; "Submit Your
Warm Data" attempts to develop a new language to counter this problem by
asking new questions and creating a multilingual system for collecting
the dreams, desires and disappointments of individual immigrants (with
the protection of anonymity for those who fear jeopardizing their
status), and reconnecting them to the collective narrative of a
community in crisis; "A Warm Database" is an interface for viewing the
responses that have already been collected and re-visualized as warm
data in order to serve as examples for the more intensive data
collection that will take place after the web launch; and "Who Are the
Disappeared?" contextualizes the project within the work being done
around detention and deportation by a wide range of activists, advocates
and community groups.

"How Do You See the Disappeared? A Warm Database" was conceived and
designed by media artist Mariam Ghani, and produced in collaboration
with programmers Rob Durbin and Ed Potter, and visual artist Chitra Ganesh.

"How Do You See the Disappeared? A Warm Database" is a 2004 commission
of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka either-ore) for its
Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome
Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

BIOGRAPHY

Mariam Ghani is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work in video,
installation and new media maps the contrapuntal narratives that emerge
in the border zones between cultures. Her work has been screened and
exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent projects featured
at the Liverpool Biennial, the Danish Film Institute, transmediale in
Berlin, Smart Project Space in Amsterdam, Curtacinema in Rio de Janeiro,
Cinema East, the New York Video Festival, White Box, Exit Art,
Participant, Inc., the Asia Society, the Bronx Museum, the Brooklyn
Museum, and the Queens Museum. Ghani is currently an artist in residence
at Eyebeam Atelier, where she is working on the second phase of her
ongoing interactive documentary project Kabul: Reconstructions.

For more information about Turbulence, please visit http://turbulence.org

–
Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org
New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog