Virtual Reality Exhibit Carne Y Arena Gives a Realistic Peek at Refugees’ Plight

We are all familiar in some manner with the human plight of refugees and immigrants. Still, sometimes, it’s easy to turn a blind eye when we’re all preoccupied with our daily lives.

Carne y Arena, an immersive virtual reality experience about the human condition of immigrants and refugees, is now available at KANEKO through Sept. 10, 2022. Kaneko collaborated with Emerson Collective, PHI Studio, and Legendary Entertainment to bring CARNE y ARENA to Nebraska after several sold-out runs in the United States and abroad. The exhibit pays tribute to the migrant’s border crossing in a way that emphasizes the value of being mindful of your surroundings and paying attention to what is happening around you.

It is the brainchild of Academy Award-winning author and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Carne y Arena was the first VR experience chosen as part of the festival’s Official Selection when it debuted at the 70th Festival de Cannes in 2017. 

Iárritu said that his conversations with numerous immigrants from Latin America who managed to cross the border served as the foundation for Carne y Arena. 

“During the making of this project, I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing many Mexican and Central American refugees,” Iñárritu said in an interview shared by the Nasher Sculpture Center. 

The director said the refugees’ life stories “haunted” him, and so he invited some of them to collaborate with him on the project. Iñárritu says his intention was to experiment with VR tech to explore the human condition and, in so doing, break the dictatorship of the frame—or the perspective within which things are just observed. He wanted to claim the space to allow the observer to go through a “direct experience walking in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts.”

The Interactive Experience at Carne Y Arena

Carne y Arena is an interactive experience so that visitors can use their hands to feel the migration process and learn about critical moments that led up to that point of a migrant’s journey.

According to the Nasher Sculpture Center, the immersive experience is a 20-minute solo journey that focuses on a multi-narrative virtual reality sequence. In fact, it’s based on true accounts as reenacted by Central American and Mexican refugees. That said, the lines between subject and bystander are blurred and are bound together through the state-of-the-art immersive tech. Just as visitors walk through a vast, sand-filled space, they witness a fragment of a refugee’s personal journey.

Docubase also described the virtual experience in detail. According to their account, there are three sections available during the experience. Participants must leave their shoes and other things in a locker in the “detention room”. After donning a headset, headphones, and backpack device, participants enter a sand-filled, dark, and spacious area where they will experience a 6.5-minute virtual reality scenario that will take them to the Chihuahuan Desert. Participants in the VR experience join a group of migrants escorted by a coyote across the border into the US. In a different chamber, a video art installation reflecting the experiences of migrants and refugees who fled El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico makes up the third part of the experience.

Throughout the run of Carne y Arena, virtual and live programming will take place, with additional community partners presenting content and events related to their exhibitions and programs. They design the exhibit areas only to allow one person at a time to move through them, limiting encounters and respecting distances safely and comfortably.

Kaneko suggests that visitors arrive at least 15 minutes before their appointment time and notes that the exhibit is unsuitable for minors under 13. Interested parties may contact Kaneko by email at info@thekaneko.org or visit their website for additional information.