Radical media, politics and culture.

Prison Industry: Artistic Approaches to Activism, New York City, April 7, 2006

Anonymous Comrade writes:


The Prison Industry:
Artistic Approaches to Activism
New York City, April 7, 2006


Film Screening and Discussion

Friday, April 7, 2006, 6:30PM

The New School
Theresa Lang Community and Student Center

55 West 13th Street
New York City

Admission: $10, free for students and alumni with valid ID

— Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Director, Program in American Studies & Ethnicity, Associate Professor of ASE and Geography, University of Southern California

— Ashley Hunt, artist and activist

— Trevor Paglen, artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley
Temporary Services, artist collaborative, represented by Salem Collo-Julin

One of the primary rationales in the punishment of crime has been the assumption that the prisoner can be rehabilitated. Today, however, the role of the prison as a place for rehabilitation, growth, and personal advancement appears obsolete. Since the privatization of the United States prison system in the 1980’s, the system has become a vast $40 billion-a-year industry, the most elaborate in the world. At a time when the U.S. has achieved the highest rate of imprisonment per capita in the history of the world—in which, for instance, one in four African American men are under correctional supervision—the American public is slowly awakening to an unprecedented crisis of mass incarceration.


Investigating notions of punishment and imprisonment, repentance and acquittal, this discussion addresses the prison industry, focusing on artistic approaches to activism and reform. The evening’s program will begin with a screening of "I Won't Drown on that Levee and You Ain't Gonna' Break My Back" (USA, 2005) by Ashley Hunt which uses the New Orleans prison crisis after Katrina as a case study and a point of departure for a larger crisis in incarceration and rehabilitation.


This event is presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s year-long thematic cycle “Considering Forgiveness.”

TICKETS: Reservations can be made by email to boxoffice@newschool.edu. Tickets can be ordered by phone with a credit card (212) 229-5488; in person at The New School Box Office, 66 West 12th Street, main floor, Monday–Thursday 1–8 p.m., Friday 1–7 p.m.


INFORMATION: 212.229.5353,
Email:
specialprograms@newschool.edu
Website: Here.