WATER WALK, AN ODE TO THE IMMIGRANT BODY
2019 - ongoing
THIS PROJECT IS AN ART PIECE AND A RESEARCH PLATFORM INVESTIGATING THE POLITICIZED FIGURES: WATER AND BORDER-CROSSER’S IN THE SONORAN DESERT TERRITORY
Video Installation
Video duration: 1 hour
INSTALL FORMAT TBA
VIDEO TEAM
- Director: Jessica Fertonani Cooke
- Photography Director: Julius Schlosberg
- Assistant Camera: Aaron Bugaj
- Costume Directors and Producers: Arturo Herrera & Jessica Fertonani Cooke
- Day of Production: Eva Kihl and Justice
- Water Walkers (perfromers): Neomi Martins, Tamara Jimenez, Amaya Jimenez, Arturo Herrera, Dora Rodriguez, Astral Catman, Kate Becker, Victor Velazquez and Jessica Fertonani Cooke.
VIDEO PARTNERS
Salva Vision, Kate’s Magik, Jane Fudyma and
Boboquivari Sacred Defence Project.
TO VIEW FORUM PROGRAM
SCROLL BELLOW
NEXT FORUM DATE TB
The piece portrays a one hour poetic procession of 9 immigrants - diverse between age, race, gender and immigration history, walking on water washes of the Tucson territory.
Each walker embodies their own symbolic visual language or action tied to the territories political strifes, ancestral mythologies and to their own historical biography regarding immigration (directly or ancestrally). The piece utilizes the ecological decline of the water
washes to symbolize the acute political period the Sonoran Desert faces regarding border policies. At large the piece alludes that an ecological decline immediately entails a social-political and cultural one too.
Water is symbolic of life, meanwhile, the immigrant leaves home in search for Life. It is ironic that in their search for life they cross ‘dead’ territories with dried out rivers, where the most important factor is making sure they have enough water to keep living.
Sacrificing the last bit of Life in them, the literal and symbolic border crossers needs water to survive.
The film intends to develop an imaginary landscape that speaks of the politicized figure: border-crosser. This figure symbolizes extreme sacrifice and courage in search for life, for new possibility, bridges and passages. Border-crosser in this sense is the bridge between impossible political alliances, between concrete and spiritual worlds and between the pragmatic and the symbolic. The immigrant who crosses the US/Mexico border, ‘breaks’ the wall between 2 extremely different countries bringing them closer. This is an extremely concrete political act, with immediate cultural and spiritual consequences. Embedded in the Sonoran ‘waterless rivers’, the Water Walkers navigate towards uncharted streams of urgent reinvented mythologies.
Forum programs adresses Sonoran Desert Border research around:Border arizonan native tribes: Tohono O’odham, Pima, Yaqui, Water conservations projects of the Sonoran Desert, personal bordercrossing histories and immigrant rescue projects. THE FORUM PROGRAM IS PERPETUALLY IN SEARCH FOR NEW VOICES, SPONSORSHIPS, VENUES, CULTURAL INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT. TO CONTACT US WRITE AT JESSFCOOKE@GMAIL.COM
1ST FORUM - 4 HOURS DURATION
TUCSON ARIZONA, DECEMBER 2019
THEMES
- Introduction to the Project as a whole and Forum statement by Jessica Fertonani Cooke
- Tohono O’Odaham land politics and impacts of new immigrations laws by Denis and Ernie from the Baboquivari sacred defence project
- Immigration rescue policies and personal border-crossing experience by Dora Rodriguez of the Salva Vision immigrant rescue program.
- Community immigration stories crossing over to Arizona USA by all present.
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