portmantō
untitled still, The Devil's Abacus
In this work, I’m abstracting participatory behaviors related to solitary confinement. I’m looking at solitary confinement as the punishment system inside of any American prison; an internal punishment routine that helps American prisons incarcerate people with an ‘easier process’ for creating a ‘more successfully managed incarcerated population'. . . Currently somewhere around 80,000 people in the American prison system are held in solitary confinement, as a method of controlling the behavior of all imprisoned persons.
Abstracting, what does that mean? There is an inherent trauma in reducing a person to a number, placing that person into the penal system and, later, solitary confinement. When I sample audio recordings of people in this system saying numbers, and lift those words from their context in full sentences, the accumulated samples of people saying numbers shows us the entrenched habits, the habitual ‘how’ of the system re-inscribing itself in its day to day process through ritual participatory behaviors around numbers.
I do not show actual prisoners in the work, connecting their personal identity to this situation. As audience members, we want to think we have empathy. We also have deeply conditioned avoidance when we are confronted with the image of a stranger in pain. We want to turn away from seeing the prisoner’s dehumanized condition inside the system.
As such, I pull the image of the person being dehumanized out of the work, so that we can experience only evidence of the behaviors applied to dehumanize them. We examine [ The Devil’s Abacus ].
Viewer-participants will discover other isolated aspects of routines and learned behaviors associated with solitary confinement. There will be reference to the traumatic self-harm this system encourages among its subjects. I am employing a variety of cutup techniques to found media, and mixing it with created content using generative computer approaches, i.e. creating a systemic consideration of the evidence of the behaviors that re-inscribe the system in question.
It will be disorienting, atmospheric, dark, and surprising. The media content? Projected light and sound sculpture, live instrumental performance, and audience participation.
August 26, MLE fringe fest, multimedia interactive performance with #PresentMusic at Vogel Theater 5:45 PM
I hope to see you there!
still image from animation for the multimedia artwork The Devil's Abacus (c) 2018 Jessica Fenlon
untitled still, The Devil's Abacus
In this work, I’m abstracting participatory behaviors related to solitary confinement. I’m looking at solitary confinement as the punishment system inside of any American prison; an internal punishment routine that helps American prisons incarcerate people with an ‘easier process’ for creating a ‘more successfully managed incarcerated population'. . . Currently somewhere around 80,000 people in the American prison system are held in solitary confinement, as a method of controlling the behavior of all imprisoned persons.
Abstracting, what does that mean? There is an inherent trauma in reducing a person to a number, placing that person into the penal system and, later, solitary confinement. When I sample audio recordings of people in this system saying numbers, and lift those words from their context in full sentences, the accumulated samples of people saying numbers shows us the entrenched habits, the habitual ‘how’ of the system re-inscribing itself in its day to day process through ritual participatory behaviors around numbers.
I do not show actual prisoners in the work, connecting their personal identity to this situation. As audience members, we want to think we have empathy. We also have deeply conditioned avoidance when we are confronted with the image of a stranger in pain. We want to turn away from seeing the prisoner’s dehumanized condition inside the system.
As such, I pull the image of the person being dehumanized out of the work, so that we can experience only evidence of the behaviors applied to dehumanize them. We examine [ The Devil’s Abacus ].
Viewer-participants will discover other isolated aspects of routines and learned behaviors associated with solitary confinement. There will be reference to the traumatic self-harm this system encourages among its subjects. I am employing a variety of cutup techniques to found media, and mixing it with created content using generative computer approaches, i.e. creating a systemic consideration of the evidence of the behaviors that re-inscribe the system in question.
It will be disorienting, atmospheric, dark, and surprising. The media content? Projected light and sound sculpture, live instrumental performance, and audience participation.
August 26, MLE fringe fest, multimedia interactive performance with #PresentMusic at Vogel Theater 5:45 PM
I hope to see you there!
still image from animation for the multimedia artwork The Devil's Abacus (c) 2018 Jessica Fenlon