Opening Prisons: Art as Investigation & Deconstruction of Carceral Spaces · Disruptive Fridays #31
With Sean Vegezzi (Visual Artist and Researcher, US) and Fiamma Montezemolo (Artist and Anthropologist, IT/US). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Founder & Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE)
Live & online chat: https://www.disruptionlab.org/fridays
Part of the series SMART PRISONS: Tracking, Monitoring & Control
This Disruptive Fridays launches a series of events heading to the SMART PRISONS: Tracking, Monitoring & Control conference, that will take place on March 24-26 at Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin. At the core is the investigation of recent developments in the creation of prisons and detention centres, with attention both on technical and ethical implications of tracking, monitoring and control.
New York based artist and researcher Sean Vegezzi introduces his investigative artistic project on an obscured part of New York City’s carceral infrastructure – as an artistic production commissioned by Disruption Network Lab, whose results will be presented at our conference during a keynote speech. The focus of his investigation is the Vernon C. Bain Center (VCBC), an 800-bed, 191-meter floating detention facility moored in the East River within the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. VCBC functions as an auxiliary of the Rikers Island jail complex and is the primary facility for the criminal court intake in the Bronx. Worldwide, it is the only floating structure that was ever purpose-built as a detention facility. Vegezzi’s work with Disruption Network Lab in 2022-2023 will present the history of this structure through a curated selection of archival materials gathered thus far, and a commissioned video installation that will bring the “ship” into more expansive public view from its current state of “offshore obscurity” (Mike Ricketts, 2015).
Sean Vegezzi’s talk for Disruptive Fridays starts with an extract of the film Edgelands: VCBC, made in collaboration with Laura Poitras and grassroots organization Take Back the Bronx / TBBX (IG, TW). Edgelands: VCBC is one three films in the Edgelands series. Through this film, Vegezzi and Poitras investigated a public health crisis aboard the vessel during the COVID-19 pandemic by intercepting radio transmissions from prison staff. The upcoming work with Disruption Network Lab will be based on discovered materials related to the construction of VCBC in the archives of Avondale, the now-defunct Louisiana-based shipbuilder contracted to create the facility. The archives include never-before-seen documentation of the facility’s interior, financial and budgeting records, and correspondences within the company. Furthermore, it will also support his ongoing legal inquiries about the current infrastructure implemented, and whether the facility uses smart technology.
Fiamma Montezemolo works at the intersection between contemporary art and anthropology, creating site-specific, interdisciplinary, and cross-genre interventions that build on her long-term exposure to borderlands and border zones. In this talk, she will focus on specific issues related to the border as a sign of confinement and the possibility of overthrowing its constraining connotation through certain acts of imagination. Montezemolo will present Project Perucatti, in which, working with architect and designer José Parral, she transformed the historical Santo Stefano prison on the island of Santo Stefano from an architectural center of power (the panopticon) into a volume populated with poetic still images. Located on an island, this ex-prison is notorious for its confinement of political dissidents. On a scale model of the prison, the artists have replaced the guard in the central tower with a digital screen, offering the viewer a stream of images inspired by the wishes and desires of prisoners.
Montezemolo will also discuss Exit Only, in which ‘Exit Only’ is the Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History’s exit ticket. There are of course no entry tickets to the Museum. This exit ticket is valid only once per year: on March 9th. The date marks the anniversary of the first official exit from Guantanamo, in 2004, of the Tipton Three, the three British citizens from Tipton (England) who were held for two years by the US government in extrajudicial detention. The piece meditates on the deferred temporality of a facility whose promise to be closed never arrives, except for those in possession of the ‘Exit Only’ ticket. As more visitors deliberately choose to enter in possession of this yearly ticket and with it to access and create an art critical space, the emergency measures of wartime are gradually disabled.
This Disruptive Friday is funded by Allianz Kulturstiftung, as part of the project “SMART PRISONS: Tracking, Monitoring & Control” (July 1, 2022, to June 20, 2023), curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli.
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