RE: "I am going to keep an eye on the West Mesa Murders case, because I think it would be pretty powerful to bear witness to that through performance."
When I first heard this, I thought it might be too dark a subject for this sort of thing, but I think I have an idea, or maybe just a piece of an idea.
The other day, probably two days ago, the Albuquerque Journal had a front page article about the twenty-four women who have gone missing from the city over the last several years, most of them fitting the apparent profile of the West Mesa victims--addicts, prostitutes....
The article mentioned that the family of one of the missing women--a woman whose body was recently found on the mesa--has been refusing to talk with the local news station because the station refused to give coverage to and help them locate their missing daughter/sister, ostensibily because she wasn't some blonde-haired, blue-eyed Elizabeth Smart snatched from the safety of her All-American family's suburban home, but rather a woman of the streets with an arrest record, dark skin, and meth scars.
(God, what outrageous bullshit. If I had a TV I'd boycott the hell out of that station.)
So anyway, I was thinking: what if twenty-four people, wearing twenty-four paper masks of the (color-copied) faces of the missing women turned up at this TV station--in its lobby, in its parking lot, wandering as far in as security might allow--maybe bearing signs, maybe with message-bearing t-shirts, maybe not--and just not saying anything. Silent. Like ghosts. Ghostly reminders. I'm not sure if this is the best way possible for a group such as ours to comment on this, but it just seems that it would seem ominous and sad as all hell, "Carnival of Souls" creepy, powerful.
Here's that Journal article:
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100020825&docId=l:934366111&start=16
This is just one idea. Maybe there should a separate thread for all of our ideas about addressing this.