Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

This paper explores broader questions regarding the continuously evolving relationship between culture, language, technology, and activism through the case study of an experimental arts-led research project within a contested political and physical landscape. In 1942, the US Congress established the ‘Bracero’ program, permitting millions of Mexican workers temporary visas to visit and work as farm labourers in the USA. Many welcomed the opportunity but were often subject to harsh conditions, prejudice, and suspicion. Sensitive to the risk of damaging testimonies causing damage to its ongoing recruitment drives, the US postal service was instructed not to deliver many of the Bracero men’s letters back to their families in Mexico. In 2020, Stanford University published twenty-four undelivered hand-written letters, raising awareness of this historic censorship. In collaboration with a counterpart based on the Mexican side of the border, Cotterrell transcribed the letters and produced two modified systems to enable the automated broadcast of Morse code messages using the headlights of cars and trucks. This simple symbolic analogue gesture required an extraordinary series of tasks, which ensured that the artists were required, not only to develop the tools for their novel communication and explore the topography and communities of the region, but also to navigate the complexity of jurisdictions intensely controlled by the Mexican Military, local power brokers and US Customs and Border Protection Forces. This paper explores the learning that can be gained (and the challenges revealed) through the combination of contemporary technology, legacy systems and direct experience. The rapid expansion of tools for communication and access to extraordinary archives of knowledge promises extraordinary new insights. However, this paper argues the need to continuously explore new creative tactics to reveal unexpected questions and claim space for underrepresented narratives.