What is Defacing the Monument?

A former journalist, Susan Briante started taking graduate students to the US-Mexico border in 2016 to research and write about migration issues. What began as essays documenting the crisis turned into a reflection on documentary poetics: the act of witnessing and writing about the suffering of others. Opening with the narration of an Operation Streamline hearing— a proceeding during which as many as 75 undocumented migrants were criminally prosecuted and sentenced en masse to serve jail time prior to deportation— Defacing the Monument shows what happens to those who do not hold the “correct” documents and highlights how the archive bears the marks of power. Part documentary, part lyric essay, part primer, Defacing the Monument is an exploration of the many ways we might tell stories and a guidebook for anyone who believes in what documentary poetics, and all art, can and should do in…