Tim Barrus Performance: Human Trafficking July 9, 2009

Human Trafficking is a one-man "performance" play (and screenplay) by Tim Barrus that incorporates the use of video that speaks visually to the ideas of POWER and IDENTITY. Those with power establish their identity. Tim Barrus argues that human trafficking can only exist in cultures juxtaposed against the idea of slavery where slavery is a reality both overtly and subversively as cultural roles where individuals exist as workers in a system of class hierarchy. The sexual slave and the worker drone share submissive attributes that keep the dominant aristocracy intact. The term "slave" can never refer to the lower classes even when the lower classes live lives of sheer desperation and servitude. The powerless are trafficked by the powerful. Sexually and otherwise. Go beyond the concept of humans trafficked as crime -- which is a universal outrage -- to the ideas of power and how it's used to abuse and create profit. The term "human trafficking" refers to the relationships one negotiates with through a lifetime of connection and disconnection, dominance, submission, and the acceptance of one's place in this social hierarchal scheme of things.
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Official Website: http://human-trafficking.tumblr.com