39 Inside

On July 23rd, 2017 during the scorching Texan summer in San Antonio, police identified a suspicious semi-trailer parked at a Walmart. Inside, they found thirty-nine undocumented migrants, eight of them dead. Apparently, forty more left the truck before police arrived. Based on these true events, Jose Martinez has created a piece that tells the unheard details of this and other similar journeys. This work is created as a choreographed piece of music where the only element of scenery is an open, rectangular, aluminum structure, half the size of a real semi-trailer. The music encompasses live musicians interacting with computer-made sounds and complemented by prerecorded first-person accounts in Spanish.

The video content, projected on one of the front sides of the structure, supplements this dire story, pulling from both abstract and real content. 39 Inside is a grim submersion into the issue of undocumented migration that will take the audience closer to the experiences lived only by those who dare to take this perilous journey; one that might end in deportation or death.