The Migrant Experience

Exodus 23:9   

"Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners because you were foreigners in Egypt." 

Imagine yourself as a migrant, a refugee striving to escape your homeland's perils. You roam the desert, enduring extreme conditions ...eluding search parties and helicopters. Until that fateful moment that you are captured. The border patrol has you and several others surrounded, and you cannot escape. This is the startling event you’ll experience while taking that journey through filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Carne y Arena, an immersive VR installation at the Richmond Craneway Pavilion. On December 18th, the discipleship group took a field trip to the Craneway, to expand our insight into the hardship immigrants face, in order to seek asylum here in the U.S.

When you first step inside, you’re greeted by a receptionist and are given the rules. There is also a placard placed on a piece of the actual fencing, used to discourage those from crossing over the border. On it the history of its use.

Yet your reality starts to blend with that of the migrant when you walk through the curtain and read Iñárritu’s account of creating this project.

 

Once inside, you’re placed in a detention center and are asked to remove your shoes and socks, then place them in a locker. From there the instructions written on the wall in both English and Spanish tell you to wait for the lights to flash on a specific door. As you’re sitting there barefoot, feeling the concrete floor underfoot, you get a disconcerting sense of uncertainty.

The lights flash beside the door and you enter a dimly lit space, with coarse sand …giving you the feel of the desert floor. You’re asked to put on the VR goggles and backpack and walk around the area. Within the VR world, you’re dropped into the middle of nowhere, at dusk with others like yourself in tow. I won’t spoil it any further, however, I will say this is something you have to grapple with in person to get the gist of their reality. It really is an eye-opening experience as it will cause you to react in ways you normally wouldn’t. In the end, you’ll have the moment to view the testimonies of actual immigrants, who survived such harsh conditions .... completing this faithful narrative.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the countless migrants, who are treated unjustly or worse.... lose their lives in search of a better life.