The Agitators are Ignorance, Power, and Poverty is a one-channel video piece that explores social unrest as a method of resistance toward the mishandling of social order and the incompetence of the state. The narrative of this video is based on the student massacre that occurred in Mexico City in Tlatelolco, on October 2,1968. The reenactment raises the question of dissidence as an answer to dissatisfaction.
Within the video, puppetry and performance are used as a narrative clutch. This detourned form of puppetry acts as an allegory for master-slave relations, as well as setting the stage for a dramatic de-control. Its aesthetics and form serve to deliver a message that could initially be perceived as non-threatening because of its absurdity and inanity. But as the narrative progresses, these visual representations that sneak by as entertainment reveal a potential for a more impacting meaning. Puppetry becomes a disturbing metaphor for power, control, desire, and failure in the broader framework of master-slave relations.
The metaphor for the construction of citizenship and civil disobedience illustrates that despite development, social movements such as those in Mexico City had to continue to fight against the political practice of 1968, as we today have to fight against the systems of domination that sneak by as being rational.
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The Agitators are Ignorance, Power, & Poverty (2006)
