45th Parallel focuses on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House—a unique municipal site between the jurisdictions of Canada and the United States. Constructed in 1904 under the patronage of the local Haskell family, this building was deliberately designed to straddle the frontier between Canada and the US as a symbolic act of unity in the transnational town of Stansted.

Lawrence wrote a monologue and devised a performance for the Haskell, the only dual-jurisdiction opera house in the world. Working on-site to activate the legal and symbolic potential of the building, the artist’s script is performed by the acclaimed filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel. The story that unfolds, centers on Hernández vs. Mesa, a judicial case covering the fatal, cross-border shooting in 2010 of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national by a US Border Patrol agent. In 2019, when the case reached the Supreme Court, the Office of the President of the United States intervened in favor of Mesa—the border guard—to claim that, as the firearm was discharged on US soil and the murder of Hernández took place in Mexico, the guard could not be prosecuted in the US. The case was debated in the Supreme Court, where judges were openly fearful that Mesa’s prosecution would create a precedential vulnerability that could lead families impacted by US drone strikes to seek justice.

The performance about one border conflict is set on the site of a grey legal area and looks at how each border implicates the other and how borders are not lines but, rather, richly layered spaces. Each act of the performance is demarcated by a scenographic change in the hand-painted backdrop behind the performer. First, is the original opera house’s backdrop of a Venice canal, followed by two new hand-painted backdrops created by the artist that are also part of the installation at Mercer Union. One references a 1920 painting by artist Richard Carline of an aerial view of Damascus and its surrounding landscape, and the other depicts the concrete culvert of the 2010 El Paso–Juárez cross-border shooting.

The video and backdrops presented at Mercer Union serve as a portrait of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House and tell stories of permeable borders and impermeable laws, reflecting on how free movement, free knowledge, and free space are under threat.

CREDITS

Directed by Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Featuring
Mahdi Fleifel, As the Private Ear
Music by Susan Alcorn Lobato

Cinematographer: Jarred Alterman
Sound recordist: Jon Mendel
Image editors: Inneke Van Waeyenberghe & Jarred Alterman
Sound design & Mix: Adam Laschinger
Colourist: Karol Cybulski at CHEAT
First camera assistant: Lucas Ruderman
Gaffer: Kellon Haynes
Swing: Milana Gurt
Theatre Technician: Vincent Boudreau
Production Coordinator: Sierra Urich
Production Assistant: Sophia Luk
Script Consultant: Skye Arundhati Thomas
Titles: Alisha Coelho Pereira

Produced by Luke W Moody / Lonostudio

Co-commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art; Mercer Union, Toronto; Spike Island, Bristol; and Western Front, Vancouver. The film is produced by LONO Studio and made possible with the generous support of the Arts Council England, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation.

More about Lawrence Abu Hamdan