Susana Ruiz’s MFA thesis project – one of the projects from the 2nd class of thesis graduates to complete their MFA’s from the interactive media division’s, is an embodied explication of the intractable, miserable, life diminishing products of what happens when difference – political, ethnic, religious, skin color – is seen as a bad thing.
The hope here is that the moment of stepping into an experience wherein one is forced to experience that intractability, or to play the role of those who are engaged in the Darfur catastrophe, will bubble the crisis up at the local, individual level, so that it’s more than a news blip, at least here in the US. If you can “play” through the linkages of action and reaction, or live the life of a refugee, empathy and response may arise. The jury is still out on that point, but the motivation is decidedly spot-on.
If digital networks hold any promise for species evolution, I would hope it would be a hack to patch the bad code that makes us think that life can ever be cheap and that things that are different should be annihilated.
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