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is a four-part series that considers the realities of mass incarceration through the lens of art and activism.

In conjunction with Coby Kennedy’s Summer 2021 exhibition

, a four-part program series that considered the realities of mass incarceration through the lens of art and activism. Over the course of four weeks, Broadcast is releasing Beyond The Box’s accompanying video series, each paired with a newly commissioned text that further elaborates on the thematic pillars charted by For Freedoms: Awakening, Listening, Healing, and Justice.

Below, for Justice, For Freedoms writer and curator Anisa Tavangar reflects on the series and builds a case for art’s potential to address society’s most pressing challenges.

When Coby Kennedy first shared the design for 

, the sculpture's luminosity captured my attention. At once glimmering and grotesque, the work encapsulates the aspiration of an ideal justice and the reality of corruption that overrules this system.

Reflecting on Kalief Browder's story as a group—those of us at For Freedoms, Sam Giarratani of Negative Space, and our counterparts at Pioneer Works—we broke down the elements of this youth's life that resonated most deeply: the urgency of community care and alternatives to incarceration; the nuance of individual stories and the way language manipulates how society treats incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated individuals; the outsized impact of mass incarceration on children and young people, from the system-involved to the system-impacted; the growing rate of incarceration that necessitates qualifying it as "mass," and the responsibility we collectively hold to halt this growth and move towards abolition. These themes became the guide to our shared project.

Kalief's story inspired so much because it is extreme, but it is not unique. As I watch missiles rain down on Ukraine on social media, confronted with the quick destruction of explosions and fire, I cannot help but reflect on the slow destruction—the pernicious poisoning of individuals and whole communities—by mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is an act of extreme violence. The carceral system is one that erodes our collective potential by vilifying, hiding away, and torturing so many of our neighbors, like it did to Kalief Browder. All of these examples of violence, occupation, and oppression abase our true collective capacity.

But in the midst of so much pain, is there room for art? To construct 

, the four-part program series in conversation with Kennedy's sculpture, we turned to those who might have an answer: formerly incarcerated artists and poets, community organizers and legal advocates providing support for children and trans individuals in the criminal legal system, and individuals with lived experiences that propel them towards transformation. All of our panelists, whether or not they are traditional art-makers, are creative practitioners. Their work is profoundly creative; they dream and realize approaches that have never before existed, while pushing against the aggressive preoccupation with punishment that overrules society. A painting will not save us, but it could give us the vision of our aspiration. A poem will not shift engrained structures, but it has the capacity to give language to their overhaul.

This notion is what Grace Lee Boggs termed "

," that artists and envisioners can create a guide to transformation. 

 attempted to employ this strategy, pairing artists with activists and experts, constructing layers of creativity, data, and experience. Mass incarceration encapsulates our most pressing societal challenges—unspeakable racial prejudice, widening extremes of wealth and poverty, rampant misogyny, persistent transphobia, inaccessible education and community resources, and a demoralizing lack of opportunity. It responds to all of these by exacerbating them. Visionary organizing rallies the values of abolition, of community care and collective well-being, to address each of these issues with a greater vision for the future.

Art can also offer itself as a backdrop to this work. Art spaces and organizations can acknowledge their privileged position and create space, physical and ideological, to shift conversations in favor of abolition. At the conclusion of the series, Mikelina Belaineh, a panelist in the final event, reflected on the power of holding this conversation in a space as beautiful as Pioneer Works. Their observation, of the high ceilings, of light streaming through the windows, of the adjoining courtyard, highlights that art doesn't always have to speak; sometimes art is best when allowing others to lead the discussion. Bringing heavy topics like confinement into airy environments gives the ideas room to breathe; the spirit of the physical space fuses with the consequence of astute discourse.

Even as questions were being answered, this was not a space of resolution; it was one of process. 

 to activate the sculpture while engaging with living discourses. In that sense, the series itself was an act of art-making, of generation, or creative envisioning.

Devon Simmons, 2019 Soros Justice Fellow, co-founder of the 

 at Columbia Law School, and our perceptive and inviting moderator, made sure that art was explicitly part of every conversation:

I asked every panelist how they interacted with the installation. Every response was different.

One of the panelists spoke about how they didn’t want it in the community, which I found to be interesting. When I asked why, the person said, “it feels too heavy to be here. There’s already enough pain and suffering in our community.” I remember being baffled by the comment because I was looking at the installation in a totally different way that day. On this hot summer day, the sun illuminated the installation, which made me feel that Kalief’s presence was shining down on us. I felt happy that his story had actually had an impact on the larger society. Kalief’s case demonstrates the failure of our criminal legal system on every level: the cops who arrested him, the district attorneys who failed to do their due diligence in regards to the facts/particulars, the multiple judges who disregarded the presumption of innocence, and the department of corrections.

At For Freedoms, we have dedicated the last year of programs and projects to justice, investigating what it means to create 

This justice is one that falls beyond the bounds of what we already know and invites more participants to engage with what justice could be. This strategy acknowledges that justice, like these programs, is not a product but a process, always evolving to accommodate new findings and bring in new voices. Justice requires all of us. It's in constant effort that we can achieve perfect justice, not as a result of particular work but as a consequence of our commitment to improvement. ♦

The Art of Abolition

, a four-part program series that considered the realities of mass incarceration through the lens of art and activism. Over the course of four weeks, Broadcast is releasing Beyond The Box’s accompanying video series, each paired with a newly commissioned text that further elaborates on the thematic pillars charted by For Freedoms: Awakening, Listening, Healing, and Justice. Below, for Healing, Jasmine Wahi details how American institutions fail the public.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, indivisible [with me invisible], and liberty and justice for some."

Epigraph/Epitaph


1. They say people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

    But what if the stone-throwers imprisoned YOU within the glass?


2. Is the ivory tower a threat or a promise?


3. Can an institution founded on the premise of Whiteness ever be anything but the    masters' house?


Do you dream in color? Or does your mind reserve Darkness for the stuff of nightmares?

Do you travel this world knowing that I put a target on your back?

I often wonder about the ways in which “we” occupy public space. The sub/unconscious cues for how we move through this world ricochet through our synapses during our waking hours. I wonder about the ways in which a society founded on White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy—a country that built its foundation on the backs of enslaved Black people—shapes our sense of space. The way we operate in public, and perhaps in private, varies greatly based on our placement on the matrix. Our intersections and multiple-converging-identities inform our experiences and interactivity with one another. Social conditioning informs our sense of space, place, and interpersonal communication.

When I think of dichotomies of public space, I am struck by the singularity of the word public. To which public do we refer to when we think about these municipal arenas? Who created this false paradigm in which we are all considered equal, in which we all have equity in the collective ownership of common ground?

When I think about public space, and the ways in which we occupy it, I think of America, the playground for hegemonic Whiteness, and America, the minefield for everyone else.

I think about the American institutions that are in service of the public. I ponder how vast and idiosyncratic our public works are—the reality that a system in “the-service-of-the-public” is functional relative to who that particular “public” is.

When I contemplate this relativism, I am reminded of Kalief Browder. A sixteen year old Black boy who was riding on a city train during the upswing of Mayor Bloomberg’s New York. This child, Kalief Browder, arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack, was a member of the public and taken in by an institution-in-the-service-of-the-public.

When you go over the three years that he spent [in jail] and all the horrific details he endured, it’s unbelievable that this could happen to a teenager in New York City. He didn’t get tortured in some prison camp in another country. It was right here!”

[An Aside: It was this same institution-in-the-service-of-the-public that gently handcuffed Dylann Roof and dotingly fed him fast food burgers shortly after he murdered nine Black worshipers in a house of God.]

When the institution-in-the-service-of-the-public is grounded on rules etched into the books of Slave owners, which public does it serve?

Is there a place in an institution for safety and salvation?

In the municipal space, our “public” systems are segmented into parts that run both parallel and perpendicular to one another. There is the justice system. There is the transport system (these two converged for Kalief). There is the education system. There is the culture system. Housing. Finances. Etc. etc.

Where does one find an antidote to a public’s peril in the thick plait of institutions-in-the-service-of-the-public systems?

When I think of Kalief Browder, I think of his drive to change institutions-in-the-service-of-the-public. I think of how he bore the wounds inflicted upon and around him for a larger public service. I think of how we must memorialize his experience, both for him and for the public.

I think about the ways we have commemorated Kalief, not only his life before but also his life after the change inflicted upon him. The Kalief 2.0, shrouded in the un-ebbing breath of solitude. It is through the artist, and the institutions that strain against the birthright of Whiteness, who create change against the machine.

I think about a memorial to Kalief 2.0, a memorial to our unattended and violated publics, and I think about Coby Kenndy’s 

. The box is glass-clear and sharp edged. Kalief’s real life box was not so beautiful or so clean.

They say people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.


But what if the stone-throwers imprisoned YOU within the glass? ♦


Notes from the Glass House: For Kalief

In conjunction with Coby Kennedy’s Summer 2021 exhibition 

, a four-part program series that considered the realities of mass incarceration through the lens of art and activism. Over the course of four weeks, Broadcast is releasing Beyond The Box’s accompanying video series, each paired with a newly commissioned text that further elaborates on the thematic pillars charted by For Freedoms: Awakening, Listening, Healing, and Justice. Below, for Listening, Pastor Isaac Scott speaks to the harms of incarceration and introduces works by several writers whom he’s worked with through his program 

PRISON IS A MONSTER by PASTOR ISAAC SCOTT

Prison is a monster without taste buds, but with an inexhaustible appetite. The isolated, hyper-regulated nature of the prison environment is so radically different from the outside world that we must begin to imagine incarcerated life as existing in a society that is hidden within a larger society. Every year across this nation, thousands of people enter the prison system and everyone is chewed up, but not everyone is spit back out into society in a way that ensures a safe and successful reintegration. The deprived social environment of prison can impede one’s capacity to navigate various social obligations post-incarceration. Research shows that incarceration has negative psychological effects on people in prison. These include a dependence on institutional structure and contingencies; hypervigilance, interpersonal distrust, and suspicion; emotional over-control, alienation, and psychological distancing; social withdrawal and isolation; incorporation of exploitative norms of prison culture; diminished sense of self-worth and personal value; and post-traumatic stress reactions to the pains and memories of imprisonment.

The importance of public attitudes toward people impacted by the criminal legal system cannot be denied. Dehumanizing language and depictions, alongside misrepresentative storytelling, is often used to address and describe people who are impacted by the criminal legal system. The spectacularization of true crime television and criminal trials, together with false depictions of institutional life in and by the media, has provided a misleading and individualistic image of people touched by the criminal legal system, by depicting them as irrational, undisciplined individuals who willingly break the law and harm others for the sake of their own interest or pleasure. Such misrepresentations have fueled negative beliefs within public opinion and undeniably influences the general public’s pervasive negative perception of those incarcerated. The legitimacy of our current criminal justice system continues to depend on the willing participation of members of the public. Furthermore, the perpetual dehumanization of society’s lost sheep continues to fuel punitive attitudes, abusive penal policies, physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, general desensitization to such abuse, and reluctance to societal reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals.

We live in a nation where the line between accountability and punishment is not clear, and because there is no distinction, the two concepts become one in their application. The people of this country call for humane justice from the highest hills, but “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is the way this nation handles its own failures. Moving toward and creating a more harm-reductive criminal legal system means that we must define accountability outside of the context of punishment.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INCARCERATED CONTRIBUTORS OF THE CONFINED ARTS

In 2014, one year after my release from prison, I started The Confined Arts (TCA) as an exhibition featuring the artistry of individuals who are currently and formerly incarcerated. Eight years later, The Confined Arts has developed into an interdisciplinary public art and advocacy program that cultivates and showcases the creative talents of artists directly impacted by mass incarceration and intersecting social justice issues. TCA enables artists to express their voices through the visual and performing arts, poetry, and music as a means to abolish inhumane narratives and socially degrading stigmas that are used to describe the past experiences and limit the futures of individuals impacted by incarceration.

These artist have collaborated with TCA through the following projects:

 by Justin Anderson, who is currently on death row in Arkansas, was written for the 2019 

 hosted by TCA and partners. The poem did not arrive in time to be properly represented at the conference.

Beyond the Box