english text 189 until 1995 that we find a work that deals with the theme of emigration from a critical viewpoint. In the early 1990s a group of seven artists in the Faculty of Fine Arts in Granada had begun to work together on a series of collective projects. The group decided to deny the individual identities of its members and at the same time to maintain a ubiquitous public presence by changing its name in accordance with the exhibition or project in which they were involved. Thus the titles of their works – Besos Negros (Black Kisses), Cuarto Oscuro (Dark Room), Enunciación (Enunciation) and Agraciados Agradecidos (Graceful and Grateful) – are the origin of the different names by which the group has been known. An artistic oeuvre oriented towards sexual identities, the image of women and the precarious condition of ethnic minorities in Spain. In 1995 they presented the exhibition Convergencia at the Sala Montcada run by Fundació “la Caixa” (Barcelona), and in the Catalan context the title inevitably suggested allusions to a wellknown political party with a very strong identity.5 The installation consisted of a car, inspired by the ones used by Maghrebi citizens who cross the Iberian peninsula in the summer, some lights reminiscent of Hispano-Arab oil lamps, postcards of emigrants and a wall covered with the senyera – the Catalan flag. The work was a reflection on how a feeling of national identity can bring together a community of citizens while at the same time excluding others. A valiant proposal and a very valid one, given the secessionist mood in Catalonia. The group broke up soon after that exhibition, although some of the members remained active in the field of visual arts. One of them was Valeriano López, an artist who, like Rogelio López Cuenca, has made coloniality an inherent discourse in his work.6 In 1996 he made a film called Estrecho Adventure (Strait Adventure), an animated cartoon that appropriated the format of video games in order to criticise the laws affecting aliens in this country. The game begins with the traditional instruction to “Insert coin” and it has five levels, the titles of which are “Get the Money”, “Get Into the Country”, “Get Legal”, “Get Accepted” and “Get a Job”. The main character, Abdul, has to overcome all the difficulties that an illegal immigrant has to face – surveillance, xenophobia, precarious employment – in order to obtain a temporary work contract and thus obtain the anxiously desired legal “papers” that will enable him to normalise his residence in Spain. The game ends and on the screen we see a group of Moroccan teenagers who, once the game is over, leave the premises and disappear in the streets of a bustling Maghrebi town. This now legendary work was the first film (later transferred to video) that presented the theme of the Strait of Gibraltar from a critical viewpoint, because the parody of the game really satirises a harsh reality, that of thousands of citizens on the “other” side of the border. This essay takes its title from the Mexican artist Guillermo Gómez Peña and it is an attempt to set out a theoretical structure and articulation of a varied set of videos made by various kinds of artists at various times and with a free range of interests. They use the terms “migrant”, “emigrant” and “immigrant” as synonyms, and the use of one word or another does not imply a different meaning or different symbolic connotations. They are arranged in chronological order, as far as possible, but primary importance has been given to the conceptual relationships between these works in order to weave a broad network of meanings. Spain’s entry into the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union, produced a need to create a law to regulate the transit of non-community citizens. Spain has traditionally been a country of emigration, so the legislation that has been introduced concentrates on that aspect. The constitutional law passed in 1985 was the first attempt to regulate emigration, but it was fiercely criticised because of its police treatment of the phenomenon of migration. The deficiencies of that law led to an appeal of unconstitutionality, and the transformation of migration in the late eighties and the nineties showed the need to draw up a new law adapted to the new circumstances. The present Ley de Extranjería, the name given to the constitutional law passed in 2000 (modified in 2003 and 2009) concerning “Rights and Liberties of Foreigners in Spain and their Social Integration”, is the Spanish regulation that governs the entry and stay of foreigners from outside the European Union, and the rights and liberties to which they are entitled. The new law introduced integration policies, expanded the rights of immigrants and established a principle of equality with Spanish citizens. However, an appeal against it was presented by about fifty NGOs, which joined together to create a platform called “Papers for all. No human being is illegal”. The law was approved by all the parliamentary parties except the Partido Popular, which argued that it would have a “pull effect” that would produce a massive inflow of immigrants. The general elections that followed were won by the Partido Popular with an absolute majority and it made substantial changes to the regulations, in many cases going back to the solutions applied in the 1985 law, so that they should really be considered as a “counter-reform”. One of the first works that was produced after the passing of the Ley de Extranjería was Virginia Villaplana’s video Tras las Fronteras del Sueño de la Inmigración (Sin papeles) (Beyond the Boundaries of the Dream of Immigration Without Papers), 2000, which was included in the exhibition El borde de una herida. Emigrantes, refugiados, exiliados (The Edge of a Wound. Emigrants, Refugees, Exiles), which I curated for the Palacio Condes de Gabia (Granada) in 2001.7 It is a creative documentary about immigration, culture and integration which shows the situation of injustice and defencelessness in which citizens without identity papers find themselves as a result of the new Ley de Extranjería. The video was made in connection with an audio-visual workshop on “Immigration in Images” given by Virginal
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