I Like America
‘I like America’ uses appropriated video to reveal the way fetishized surveillance aesthetics are used to objectify and dehumanize undocumented immigrants crossing the US/Mexico border and the violence that this type of mediation can promote. Images taken from border patrol cameras and vigilante Minutemen are interwoven with footage from coyote hunts. The coyote, which is indigenous to the U.S. and Mexico, has played an important roll in native America folklore and has been considered an invading threat to livestock by farmers and ranchers. The coyote, like humans, are social, territorial and highly adaptable, they are one of the few challengers to human control over the North American plains, even adapting to suburban areas. Because of this the coyote has been aggressively hunted across the United States. Coyote is also the nickname given to human smugglers who guide groups of individuals across the US/Mexico border. I like America draws an aesthetic comparison between the coyote hunters and the emboldened Border Patrol and vigilante groups who use vision technologies to patrol the 2000 miles of US/Mexico often recording their hunts and trading the footage on-line.