[Sarai Newsletter] DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA: A Presentation by the VISIBLE Collective

[The Sarai Programme]

*The Disappeared Project: Migration, National Identity & Security Panic*
A presentation by Naeem Mohaiemen, Visible Collective, New York
4:00 PM, 17 December 2005, seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS


*DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA* is part of an ongoing project by VISIBLE Collective/Naeem Mohaiemen, which looks at the migration impulse, hyphenated national identities and the fissures that appear when these trajectories collide with security panic.  

"The majority of Muslim migrants racially profiled after 9/11 were from the invisible underclass of our cities. They are the recent arrivals, legal and "illegal", who drive our taxis, deliver our food, clean our restaurant tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers. The only time we see their faces are when we glance at the scratched hack license in the taxi partition, or the ID card around the neck of a vendor.  Already invisible, after detention they become 'ghost prisoners'."  

The presentation reviews the project and talks about some of the underlying issues facing global cities today.


[Naeem Mohaiemen is a visual artist-activist and director of Visible Collective, which created DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA (disappearedinamerica.org), a series of art-interventions that visualize post-9/11 "disappeared" Muslims.  Naeem is Editor of Shobak.Org, and Associate Editor of AltMuslim.com.  His essay "Hip Hop's Islamic Connection" will be published in Sound Unbound (MIT Press, DJ Spooky ed.) and 'No Vietcong in Iraq' will be published in Men of the Global South (Zed Books, Adam Jones ed.).  Naeem directed MUSLIMS OR HERETICS (muslimsorheretics.org), a film about struggles between ?moderate? and ?radical? Muslims in Bangladesh, which screened at numerous venues including the UK House of Lords.  His work and essays have appeared in Washington Post, Tikkun Jewish Journal, Village Voice, Alternet.org, CounterPunch.org, Chimurenga.co.za (South Africa), Wordt Vervolgd (Netherlands), Voima (Finland), New Internationalist (UK), Rediff (India), Prothom Alo (Bangladesh), and Dawn (Pakistan).]