We are alone (update: added photos)
Posted by ben on 15 Mar 2007 at 12:03 pm | Tagged as: performance art, responses/reviews
we are alone with insects invading through the earth beneath us, flooding our walls, consuming our light. we are alone with the fruit, just out of reach, that pushes us from our substance; with the herbs that wander on the edge of death, buried in earth returned to the doors. we are alone pushing our feet across stones, dirt, and wood, searching blindly for an entrance that will never exist, or a curtain to collapse this hypothetical world. we are alone hoarding our eyes in unfired clay, in the spaces between blades of grass lifted up above our heads to protect us from the unbounded sky. our tools slowly abandon us more and more each moment for the peaceful dissolution of rust. yes keep moving on and on forward: glory glory glory.
[this post is a response to "unsettlement," a windowworks installation / performance by randy wallace, on view through april 29, 2007 at artpace. photos by todd johnson]
These inmates aren’t necessarily sympathetic to our audience,” he said. The fact that they had been diagnosed with schizophrenia was unimportant. Worse, he said that as he watched the video of the dying inmate, it didn’t seem as if anything was wrong.
“Except that the inmate died,” I offered.
“But that’s not what it looks like. All you can see is his feet.”
“With all those guards on top of him.”
“Sure, but he just looks like he’s being restrained.”
“But,” I pleaded, “the man died. That’s just a fact. The prison guards shot this footage, and I don’t think their idea was to get it on Dateline.”
“Look,” the producer said sharply, “in an era when most of our audience has seen the Rodney King video, where you can clearly see someone being beaten, this just doesn’t hold up.”
“Rodney King wasn’t a prisoner,” I appealed. “He didn’t die, and this mentally ill inmate is not auditioning to be the next Rodney King. These are the actual pictures of his death.”
“You don’t understand our audience.”
“I’m not trying to understand our audience,” I said. I was getting pretty heated at this point–always a bad idea. “I’m doing a story on the abuse of mentally ill inmates in Connecticut.”
“You don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head.