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project:rendition JC 2 Public Culture 22:1 doi All photography © JC2 2007 © 2006 by Duke University Press 10.1215/08992363-2009-018 Public Culture 18(1): 1 – 000 DOI 10.125/10642684-2006-123 119 tive project that incorporated elements of installation, printed agitprop, audio, and performance into an interactive environment. The project was produced by JC2, a collective comprising the artists Joy Episalla, Joy Garnett, Carrie Moyer, and Carrie Yamaoka. The exhibition took place in May–June 2007 at Momenta Art, an artist-run charitable institution in Brooklyn that promotes emerging and underrepresented artists. project:rendition used the enactment of “rendering” to examine military policies hidden from public view. The term extraordinary rendition refers to the clandestine kidnapping and extradition of suspected terrorists to countries where they can be interrogated and tortured beyond the reach of the U.S. judicial system. While extraordinary rendition is generally reserved for supposed highvalue suspects, subtler forms of political repression, stateinduced terror, and disenfranchisement are common, insidious, and long-standing. Throughout history, similar acts have proved effective means of rendering individuals and entire populations politically mute or existentially invisible. The centerpiece of project:rendition was a tall, five-sided structure made entirely of mirrored panels and functioned as an inverted panopticon, or surveillance tower. Upon entering the “pod,” would-be voyeurs instantly became specimens to be observed, able to see only their own reflections multiplied endlessly in the one-way mirrors. Alternatively, visitors 120 project:rendition was a collabora- could choose to stay outside in the “safety” of the darkened gallery and watch other audience members subject themselves to the brightly lit pod. The project drew lines of connective tissue between text and action. Copies of John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” were made available to visitors as a free silk-screened broadside. Winthrop’s seminal text has been a touchstone for countless U.S. politicians over the past two hundred years, including Ronald Reagan in his “Shining City upon the Hill” speech and George H. W. Bush in his “Thousand Points of Light” address. Intended as a cautionary tale, Winthrop’s sermon has since morphed into a philosophical foundation for American exceptionalism and its contemporary manifestation, superpower hubris. As installation, project: rendition invoked a theatrical space that alternated or reversed roles of spectatorship and performance. JC2 invited musicians, artists, and writers to give readings and performances in the space throughout the duration of the exhibition. Viewers’ and performers’ fleeting sense of personal power and vulnerability were tested as expectations and conventional parameters for behavior were rendered in flux or illegible. Lines were blurred between contradictory states of being: paranoia and security, privacy and voyeurism, power and vulnerability, self-awareness and self-absorption, engagement and indifference. Which side are you on? Are you in or out? project:rendition Donna Evans shadowboxes on opening night. Figure 2 Port Bou train station. Photograph by David Gaya, en.wikipedia .org/wiki/File:Portbou. jpg 121 Public Culture 122 ExCErPts ANNA BLUME performing a selection from “[Euphemism]” June 17, 2007, 3:00 p.m. As I stand in this panopticon of interrogation and I speak with the language of authority, perhaps like someone teaching a class, I am confronted with the multiplicity of my own image and a sense of fear, fear that I don’t know where I begin, where I end. But more importantly, where is my connection to those who have been rendered elsewhere? Those who have been tortured in the name of my country’s freedoms. They are not my freedoms — when you torture another being you have tortured me as well. And how do I connect to that? It’s a question I feel very much within this space. . . . DAVID LEVI STRAUSS reading from an unpublished work June 17, 2007, 5:00 p.m. In the six years since September 11, Bush & Co. have changed what Americans think about themselves. Out of fear — the seed of terror — has grown a terrible complicity and stupor. . . . The question the rest of the world is asking now is this: What are these new Americans — unrestrained by tradition, loyalty, or law — capable of? People don’t believe in reality anymore. They believe in images. And this belief makes it possible for them to be manipulated through images. Images and words matter. The symbolic world, the world of phantasms, matters. We are all subject to it. And since this is where artists and writers go to work, I believe we have a special responsibility to try to unmask the propaganda and to decode the messages being sent out on American screens, and to try to counter them with different words and images — to imagine 123 other ways of thinking and acting. Public Culture CYNTHIA CARR reading from her book Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America (New York: Crown, 2006) June 17, 2007, 2:00 p.m. [Klansman Jim Ferguson liked to refer to his klavern as “the lodge.”] He said: “Things are coming true today that we predicted twenty and thirty years ago. That the country would bankrupt itself with all the giveaway programs.” Back in the 1960s he’d written critiques of welfare, affirmative action, and integration. He had felt great discouragement but was heartened now by the country’s growing conservatism. “A year ago the whole lodge got together for a meeting, the first we’d had in about five years, and they’re planning on another one this winter. With people being a little more receptive to right-wing ideals, the Klan may become visible again. That’s just something being discussed.” DR. KAY TURNER PURGES THE POD reading from the Associated Press, “Twenty-Three Detainees Attempted Suicide in Protest at Base, Military Says,” January 25, 2005 June 24, 2007, 2:00 p.m. Twenty-three terror suspects tried to hang or strangle themselves at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a mass protest in 2003, the military said yesterday. The coordinated actions were among 350 “self-harm” incidents at the prison that year, including 120 so-called hanging gestures, said Lt. Col. Leon Sumpter, a spokesman for the detention mission. In the protest, the 23 prisoners tried to hang or strangle themselves with pieces of clothing and other items in 124 their cells from Aug. 18 to 26, the United States Southern Command in Miami said in a statement. project:rendition WILLIAM ALLEN reading his poem “Wrath,” from The Seven Deadly Sins June 17, 1007, 2:00 p.m. 125 project:rendition Participants WILLIAM ALLen is a poet and painter. His poetry books include The Man on the Moon (1987) and Sevastopol: On Photographs of War (1997). His art and poetry can be seen at www.ekphrases.com. JAKe ArAUJO-SIMOn attends Stuyvesant High School in new York City. AnnA BLUMe is a professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology in new York City. She writes and teaches about translation and the interaction of cultures. CYnTHIA CArr was a columnist and arts reporter for the Village Voice from 1984 until 2003 under the byline C. Carr. She is now at work on a biography of the artist David Wojnarowicz. JOY ePISALLA is a member of JC2. Her photographic, video, and sculptural work has been exhibited in the United States and abroad. She is a longtime AIDS activist and a founding member of fierce pussy, the lesbian public art collective. DOnnA eVAnS is a printmaker. She was a member of fierce pussy and has performed with the WOW Café Theatre. JOY GArneTT is a member of JC . Her paintings reenact appropriated news photographs. Her exhibitions include a solo show at the national Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., in 2007. CArrIe MOYer is a member of JC . She is a painter, writer, and cofounder of the public art project Dyke Action Machine! She is an assistant professor at the rhode Island School of Design. DAVID LeVI STrAUSS is a writer and critic. He is the author of Manoeuvres: Poems (1980), Between Dog and Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (1999), and Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (2003), among other works. 2 2 Jake Araujo-Simon, piano recital: Debussy and improvisations. KAY TUrner is the folklorist for the Brooklyn Arts Council. She is the author of Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars (1999), among other works. CArrIe YAMAOKA is a member of JC2. Her reflective and optically charged paintings of Mylar encapsulated in resin have been exhibited widely over the past decade. She is a member of fierce pussy. JC2 thanks Bryan Webster for his technical assistance.