Kevin Ballou—Celly Port
From the artist: This project will feature a built Jail Cell installation. The inside of the Jail Cell will be filled with information displaying the perils of mass-incarceration on all societal levels and invoke thoughts and inspire action steps on how to fix it. The physical structure will be a 6 by 8 ft rectangular box made of wooden material and connected at the corners by a frame to make it foldable and easy to transport. There will be no front door to the cell, only sides and a back wall complete with a tiny open window with bars going through it. The cell will be authentic with a metal bunk bed, sink, toilet and metal box for belongings along with a small desk and chair. The interior ball wall will be written with a brief history of the American legal system and statistics of this system. The information on the side wall to the right will explain how we got to the state of mass-incarceration we are in today and the broken paradigm of a punitive based correctional system and collateral consequences that have become of it. On the far side of the wall there will be examples of ways we can change the system and focus on different societal practices such as restorative justice, trauma informed care, better education systems, etc.
On the left side of the room where the bed bunk is there will be real pictures of people during their incarceration. Pictures of family visits, of graduations, of celebrations etc. All of these pictures will be used with full consent. These pictures are going to be of people who have either come home from prison and lived a successful life (business owners, college graduates, professionals) and of people who are doing unjustified amounts of time, with the rhetorical question/statement of “What sets these people apart? They are the example, not the exception” ... I will then have an area where people can leave comments on how they vision a new system to help rectify societal deviance without a world of prisons.
I will also have a book on the table asking people to anonymously leave a confession of a crime they did and was never caught for, along with their age of commitment, race/ethnic makeup and socio-economic status at the time. I will then take the data and configure how much time was never spent in prison and how much money was saved. I will share this information on all social media platforms and create paper pamphlets of the responses and results. At certain locations, days and times I will also be performing as the prisoner and talking people through the installation while in character as the jailer. During certain performances I will have an interactive activity for people to do as a sort of escape room. I am aiming for this project to inform the public about what is currently going on at the Cuyahoga County Jail and to get involved in the reshaping of our carceral system.