by Jessica Hough
As a society, we find ourselves at a crucial junction. We are struggling
to decide between reaching out to understand our neighbor, and installing
a more elaborate alarm system. In recent years it seems our fears have turned
from enemies overseas to enemies among us. Just as we failed to understand
and relate to our global partners, we now fail to promote understanding
in our own communities. Incidents of violence, particularly as portrayed
by the media, often seem random and unprovoked. Unfortunately, each incident
is read by the public not as a call for help but rather a reason to draw
further from the community into personal space -- Trust no stranger, watch
your back, keep your hand on your purse.
Author Mike Davis writes in his essay Beyond Blade Runner: Urban Control
and the Ecology of Fear, "The current obsession with personal safety
and social insulation is only exceeded by the middle-class dread of progressive
taxation...Refusing to make any further public investment in the remediation
of underlying social conditions, we are forced instead to make increasing
private investments in physical security. The rhetoric of urban reform persists,
but the substance is extinct. `Rebuilding LA' simply means padding the bunker."
The artists in Without Alarm: Public and Private Security have examined
ideas about security, freedom, confinement, crime, victimization and the
future of our neighborhoods in a range of installations and projects. Artists
were encouraged by the Collective to interpret the theme as it related to
them and their experiences. Some of these projects can be grouped together
because of their similar interpretations of the subject matter. A brief
look at some of them will provide both an overview of the range of treatments
of the theme and the extent to which these issues permeate all aspects of
our lives.
Jack Richardson and artist team Inka Bujalski and Rachel Siegel examine
the idea of home in relation to security in their installations. Richardson
creates a dream-like atmosphere with objects that are "metaphors for
comfort" and serve to exaggerate how far prison life is from home.
Bujalski and Siegel have "domesticated" sections of the jail.
Utilizing common household objects, the artists create a comfortable zone
within the jail invoking questions about the fine line between home and
self-imposed prison. Adam Kisor's installation takes the idea of home as
a self-imposed prison even further by creating a home environment of decay.
He transforms a jail cell into a living space composed of the grime and
debris of commercial life. Kisor makes use of "newspapers, hamburger
wrappers, and other disposable items that enforce the idea of safety through
consumption" as the building materials for his piece. A television
at the center of his installation serves as a symbol of false security.
Television and the media are used as focal points in several other installations.
Tran T. Kim-Trang critiques the role of the media in perpetuating violence
against women. Collaborators Linda Arreola and Oscar Martinez are concerned
with socialization that gives rise to criminal behavior. Both artists work
with children and recognize what Arreola calls, "the potency of the
media." Their installation makes use of a television from which violent
sounds emerge. The space is both claustrophobic and secure, a quality that
a jail already contains.
Collaborators M.C. Armstrong and Lorraine Cleary examine the role that a
lack of nurturing during childhood plays in the development of "criminal"
behavior. They have transformed a jail cell into an oversized baby's crib
"complete with twisted nursery rhymes." Karen Schwenkmeyer examines
the relationship between childhood discipline and adult punishment in an
installation of "ordinary household objects that also function as instruments
of punishment for children."
Ceres Madoo presents "real freedom" as a state of mind in an installation
utilizing bird cages with their doors ajar and comical portraits of the
"jail birds" and other masked domesticated animals. Eric Gero
explores social isolation, an interest of his for several years. He has
utilized the cocoon shape as a symbol of isolation. Gero is concerned with
the role of technology in the future of community and its potential for
perpetuating social isolation.
Paranoia and the bonds of fear are the subjects of works by Paul Arnold
and Katherine Gettys. Arnold's painting depicts a terrified person -- is
the fear is caused by something real or imagined? Gettys hascreated a "secure"
place to sleep built from a four poster bed with bars welded around the
exterior. It is more of a human cage than a place to rest.
Other artists have defined imprisonment as an absence or distortion of nature.
For some artists this meant isolation from community assuming that community
is our natural organization as humans. Jennifer Parker examines nature as
a privilege in her installation. Similarly, Diana Sieradski portrays the
jail cell as a cage. She has filled the cell with brightly colored birds
as a metaphor for the treatment of prisoners as caged animals. In his installation
along the windows on the west side of the building, Andreas Hessing draws
parallels between the imprisoned L.A. River that runs behind the Los Angeles
City Jail and the unnatural state of the prisoners kept inside the building.
Jerry Ferguson, Lynn Campbell and collaborators Alfred Bie and Joan Watanabe
address the profile of the prisoner in our society. Ferguson, who works
with incarcerated people, portrays the prisoner as a person with aspirations
and dreams rather than just a criminal. Similarly, Campbell's installation
shows the viewer the similarities between the free public and incarcerated
people. Joan Watanabe recently discovered that her uncle, after being interned
in a Japanese camp in 1942, was sent to prison for resisting the draft.
Her uncle's life provides substance for her collaboration with Alfred Bie
in which the two artists explore the life of a prisoner who never really
committed a crime.
Eugenie Perret, Patty Sue Jones and Deborah Krall profile victims of violence
in their installations. Perret hopes to increase public awareness of inner
city gang violence by educating the public about the real victims of this
crime. Her installation includes the actual x-rays of young people killed
or maimed by gun wounds to the head. Jones' installation recreates her own
mugging in 1984. Krall shows the relationship between the high numbers of
minorities in prison and the lack of education and opportunity available
to these young people.
The exhibition includes artists' collaborations with community members.
Students from Plaza de la Raza along with teacher and artist Rosalie Ortega
will adorn a jail cell with art work to create "a safe side and a not
safe side." Collaborators Susan Hill and Lydia Nicole worked with incarcerated
mothers at a state facility. Each mother will create a banner that captures
her dreams and aspirations. Hill and Nicole also produced a video that provides
these women an opportunity to speak to the public.
Dennis Callwood collaborated with Lincoln High School students in an installation
that combines Callwood's black and white photographic portraits of the young
people with each subject's own text and graphics relating to his or her
feelings about community and safety. Suzanne Siegel, Cyndi Kahn and Laura
Silagi, all teachers of students who know English as a second language,
asked students to write autobiographical statements about coming to a new
community, especially in regard to safety.
Without Alarm: Public and Private Security has provided an opportunity for
artists and community members to give form to their fears as well as their
hopes for the future. More importantly the participants have come together
to recognize the enormity of theproblems we face in our city on the eve
of the 21st century and the need to work together for safety, security and
a community without walls or barriers.
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