45th Parallel(2022), a video work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, was part of the public program of the 18th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Christine Tohmé.
Focusing on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, the work recasts the border as at once powerful yet facile, absurd yet lethal.
Built in 1904, the building was designed as a symbol of unity between Canada and the US and is one of the only cross-border theatres in the world. Filmed on location to activate the legal and symbolic potential, 45th Parallel unfolds as a monologue in five acts, performed by acclaimed filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel. The story centres on Hernández vs. Mesa, a judicial case covering the fatal shooting in 2010 of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national by a US Border Patrol agent. At the Supreme Court, the bullet, which crossed the US/Mexico border, began to implicate missiles fired in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and Libya. If this murder could be tried in the US, so too could 91,340 drone strikes.
The film and installation render the location as a political and geographical grey zone, reminding us how free movement, knowledge and space are constantly under threat.
