Academy Award-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, of "The Revenant" fame, has debuted his other Oscar-winning project in The District: "CARNE y ARENA (virtually present, physically invisible)."
Hosted by the Emerson Collective, in association with Fondazione Prada and LACMA, this virtual-reality experience highlights the experience of Latin American refugees, using technology to communicate their stories in a unique way.
The project, the result of a five-year experimentation process by Iñárritu, won the director a special Academy Award after its 70th Cannes Film Festival debut. It was the first VR project of any kind to make the esteemed film festival's official selection.
The free exhibition works like this: Attendees wear goggles and haptic accessories during the six-and-half minute experience, which they undergo alone.
"Through state-of-the-art technology, visitors to CARNE y ARENA will walk in a vast space and live a fragment of a refugee’s personal journey," a release on the project states.
The project was born after Iñárritu spent time interviewing the eventual subjects of the project, Mexican and Central American refugees.
“Their life stories haunted me, so I invited some of them to collaborate with me on the project," he said. "My intention was to experiment with VR technology to explore the human condition in an attempt to break the dictatorship of the frame — within which things are just observed — and claim the space to allow the visitor to go through a direct experience walking in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts."
The use of VR technology heightens the experience, viewers argue, and open the door for creators to express themselves in more powerful ways.
“Using this immersive technology, [Iñárritu] has gone beyond the confines of the cinematic screen to create an entirely new narrative art form," said LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg director Michael Govan. "And while the images immediately depicted in Alejandro’s immersive artwork conjure the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the real subject of the work is larger: the many times in history and art history that borders have become places of conflict and opportunity, and the many people whose identities have been lost to history."
But why bring the exhibition to D.C., of all places? After all, its traveled to Milan, Spain and other locales across the globe.
Douglas Yeuell, executive director of D.C.'s Atlas Performing Arts Center, which is working with the exhibition on outreach, believes he has an answer.
"The Atlas Performing Arts Center stands as a cultural icon on H Street, NE in the District of Columbia," he said. "As an institution that believes in the power and impact that art can have on our society, culture and world, it is important for us to support such endeavors as CARNE y ARENA."
Interested in checking out the exhibition? Make sure you reserve your spot.
