an improbable monument to the end of the prison industrial complex
[this project, commissioned by CameraWorks in San Francisco for the exhibition Monument Recall and its online component Improbable Monuments, was formerly available at http://improbablevoices.net. An Improbable Monument to the end of the Prison Industrial Complex focused on speculative proposals for a monument to an improbable, but potentially marvelous, end to the prison industrial complex. Ten incarcerated women were asked a series of questions intended to stimulate their imaginations about how they would propose to re-purpose the prison they inhabited as a monument to the end of the current prison system and a memorial to the lives wasted there, if it were to be de-commissioned. Their responses, along with their descriptions of their experience in the prison, were included in this project. The work was a first "sketch" for, and has now been supplanted by, Public Secrets which brings the voices of incarcerated women, speaking on a broad range of topics that reveal the secret injustices of the prison system, to the public. The text that follows here introduced, An Improbable Monument to the end of the Prison Industrial Complex, when it was live online. Please access the link to documentation in the pull down menu or click here to see screenshots of the site]
“improbable” means “unlikely” – but also “marvelous” and “tall” as in a “tall tale”… a tall tale relates the story of an imagined, and, sometimes, marvelous world. imagining can be a point of departure for building something marvelous.
“monument” is defined as “an important site that is marked and preserved as public property”. monuments are usually public works -- structures constructed at government expense for public use.
the prison system
Currently,
prisons function as both monument and repository- in the very worst sense of
each term. They are monuments to the criminalization of poverty in capitalist
America and human repositories where the secrets of economic and political power
are kept safe. The Prison Industrial Complex is the quintessential embodiment
of power and authority in capitalist America -- the economic and architectural
manifestation of a political and social program designed to sustain and support
capitalism.
The
American criminal justice system and prison industry are a means of social control.
In the 1980s, the nation began a dramatic shift in attitude toward crime and
punishment. Lawmakers dismantled programs designed to help rehabilitate criminals
and passed tough new sentencing laws that put more people in prison for longer
periods of time. The result: crime decreased, but inmate populations exploded.
And so has the prison construction industry.
Over the past two decades California alone has built 21 new prisons- spending
roughly $4.4 billion to build the new prisons and an estimated $26.2 billion
more to keep them running. California Department of Corrections spending has
exploded, from just under $300 million in 1984 to the current $5.7 billion a
year. The expansion of the California Prison System has transformed remote,
rural and financially struggling towns into thriving economic hubs in the "prison
industrial complex" and turned a tiny public employees union - the California
Correctional Peace Officers Association - into a political behemoth that has
contributed millions of dollars to Democratic and Republican governors and legislators.
A market economy for prisons has led to a market demand for prisoners (that
is, a strong lobby for ever-tougher sentencing to satisfy the need for cheap
labor). Inmates in state and federal prisons undertake active employment in
prison for private corporations at extremely low pay and prisons are “serviced”
by corporations with monopoly contracts for catering, telephone service and
medical care.
The women’s prison population has grown by almost 500% since 1980. Over
80% of women in prison are serving time for nonviolent, property or drug-related
crimes—“crimes” of survival. Inside prison, violence against
women in the form of human rights abuses—including medical neglect, brutality,
and sexual abuse—occurs regularly. Outside prison, the imprisonment of
millions of people, disproportionately people of color, has a devastating long-term
impact on the communities from which prisoners come.
The expansion of the prison system is buoyed by the ignorance of a majority
of the public about what imprisonment really means to individuals and communities.
In the current political climate—one that supports shutting down public
access to information about government conduct, increasing repression against
people of color and immigrants, and the dissolution of civil rights—we
need alternative means of getting information into the public sphere so that
people can make informed decisions about how the government allocates resources
and treats people under its control.
Access to prisoners and prisons by the media or human rights investigators is
virtually non-existent. Several states, such as California, have enacted media
bans, making it illegal for the media to conduct face-to-face interviews with
prisoners that are not controlled and censored by prison officials. As a result,
what representations there are of prisoners tend to be exploitative and highly
inaccurate. Though there is increasing representation of “crime”
and “criminals” in mainstream media, these representations are largely
controlled by conservative special interest groups to promote their political
and financial interests.
the process
In an attempt to bring forward alternative, more accurate representations of
prisoners and the social repercussions of imprisonment I have initiated a project
collaboration with non-profit organization Justice
Now, a human rights organization that works with women in prison to
build a safe, compassionate world without prisons. Together we are documenting
conversations with women prisoners and their communities and publishing their
views in the public spaces of the city and the Internet. As government increasingly
relies on imprisonment as a catchall solution to the social problems these women
experience first hand, their voices, and images, are disappearing from public
view.
The proposal for a monument to the end of the prison industrial complex is and
archive of interviews with ten women who are incarcerated at the Central California
Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, CA - the largest female correctional
facility in the United States. Women incarcerated at CCWF are allowed visits
only with family members and legal representatives. I would not have access
to these women without the support of Justice Now. Because Justice Now supports
women prisoners in cases of sexual harassment, physical and administrative abuse,
medical neglect, compassionate release, and assists prisoners in their own efforts
to campaign for civil rights, human rights, and prison abolition, our relationship
with the prison administration is adversarial. The visits require adherence
to Kafkaesque regulations and acceptance of invasive search and surveillance
procedures. The women are not allowed access to computers, cameras, tape recorders
or media equipment of any kind. I travel with Justice Now, under the cover of
“Legal Advocate,” on visits to CCWF where I record my conversations
with the women and solicit their stories, ideas, and opinions. I am not allowed
to take photos at the prison or video tape our visits. In our recorded conversations
the participants represent their experience, history, social position and political
views. The recorded and written statements the women have made thus far are
extraordinary. Each participant has a particularly powerful story to tell and
an incisive political analysis to share.
By
making the women’s voices heard, through a variety of means, We hope to
challenge the assumptions of mainstream society about crime and punishment that
fuel a commitment to prisons as the primary solution to our most pressing social
problems. Most people who are put in prison do not need to be removed from society,
and could effectively be diverted into community-based programs. Since most
people are being sent to prison for non-violent drug-related or economic crimes,
we believe these people should receive drug treatment and/or economic assistance
(such as education, affordable childcare, job training and placement, or welfare)
instead of prison terms. Even the diminishing percentage of people convicted
of violent offenses can be helped outside the prison system, through intervention,
support for getting out of abusive relationships, anger management, conflict
resolution workshops, and drug and alcohol treatment.
The focus of many of our conversations with women at CCWF has been on imagining
a world without prisons. Imagining is a step toward building. Building a world
without prisons is a goal that is shared by many prison abolition activists.
As improbable as it may seem, improbable in the sense of unlikely and in the
sense of marvelous, we are actively imagining – and thus making the first
steps toward building - a world without prisons. The Proposal for an Improbable
Monument to the End of the Prison Industrial Complex tells a “tall tale”
– an alternative to narratives of power in both content and form –
an unauthorized representation – a story told from many, diverse perspectives.
the project
This web site functions both as a proposal and a monument-as-repository –
the pages that follow provide several options or perspectives for exploring
an archive of, currently, 143 audio files. These audio files include the women’s
political analyses, descriptions of their experience in prison, as well as proposals
detailing the renovation of CCWF as a monument to the end of the prison industrial
complex and specifying a memorial to women who have died or whose lives have
been wasted in prison. The files may take some time to download. Please be patient.
Your patience will be rewarded with a rich tapestry of individual voices. Given
the de-personalizing routine these women endure daily, I have been astonished
by the variety, breadth and depth of their voices, their personalities and their
perspectives.
This project is, in part, an exploration of the notion of database aesthetics
and the expressive potential of a multi-vocal archive online. In the course
of editing the audio and designing the database I have wished for a more flexible
tool – an online audio mixer that might more accurately reproduce the
experience of remembering and participating in conversations with these women.
This is perhaps a goal for phase II.
This work is on-going. The archive will evolve and, over time, the site will
eventually include artists’ interpretations and visualizations of the
womens’ proposals. The work of interpreting the proposals will be a distributed
collaboration. There is currently one example of this process – Ryan Chen’s
3D visualization of Beatrice Smith-Dyer’s proposal for a monument park.
This Improbable Monument acknowledges the impossibility of traditional representation
from a single point of view in contemporary public art and politics. Given this
impossibility how can a monument have relevance? This is a question which I
hope to explore: first, by proposing a radical change – a marvelous improbability
– a world without prisons and, then, by framing a context for dialogue
around this proposal – a monument that functions as a repository or archive
– not as an authorized, monolithic representation – but as a site
of multi-vocal negotiation between individuals and communities who are ready
to take responsibility for representing themselves.