Yield

Yield is an ethnographic inquiry done over a period of five years, documenting the lives of nine children living in dire Third World conditions. Stonecutters April, Ariel, and Rommel are siblings living off selling rocks they hack off a menacing mountain. Jomar scours the ocean silt for gold. Edralen and Jason tend to and transport agricultural products. With the addition of Alex and Glady Mae, both born with hydrocephalus; and Essam, a child warrior-the definition of labor is expounded to include another meaning: labor as part of the creation and eventual decline of life. Yield does away with the introductions. Toil is translated as an algorithm of nameless faces, actions and spaces. The reduction of distinct narratives puts the weight not on the individuals represented per se but on the relations of the powerless. This is the search for survival up the peak down to the depths of the sea, because the child laborers could not compete/should not be in the center.