The work, commissioned by Associação Cultural Videobrasil, was made at the Casa Tomada residency, in São Paulo, between April and July 2011. São Paulo‐based illegal immigrants from Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Congo, and Guinea are invited to read excerpts from Amerigo Vespucci’s Mundus Novus. Written between 1503 and 1504, the letter is taken as an inaugural discourse on the New World addressed to a Europe to which it was, as yet, unknown. From the particular accent and intonation of each immigrant comes a polyphony that questions the condition of the foreigner and discusses the meaning and contradictions of living between two frontiers, as well as the power relations and cultural violence that a foreign language is capable of imposing.
