Claustros
Claustros
2013, Holyoke Massachusetts
site-specific installation in abandoned jail cellblock
installation and video by Maggie Nowinski;
site-specific audio performed and composed by Matt Weston
Installation components include objects found on-site; 19th century Massachusetts State Legislature leather-bound texts, hand-inked and typed police logs circa 1910’s-1970's, 1970’s Massachusetts Law Reviews, collected paint chip samples, reel to reel tape recorder with audio loop excerpt, King Dual-Purpose tissue paper, filing drawers with index cards, police receipts, expired cleaning supplies.
Architecture of Isolation: Every Day is the Exact Same Day
The ongoing practice of placing criminals in jail and calling them “correctional” facilities reveals a superficial, archaic, and flawed understanding. Notions of enlightened democracy are called into question when faced with the reality of the primitive criminal system. As participants in the overarching societal system, whether we actively choose it or not, we are implicated as co-architects in this system; perhaps on a larger scale that seems out of focus, our perceived lack of power acts as a kind of harness that binds us.
Notes from the site:
The jail site is so eerie it comes across as cinematic and staged, with its dust and discarded forgotten 19th-century legal texts left to rot in the place intended to mete out the justice they enforced. The heavy-handed atmosphere calls out for a jungle of growth, song, and light.
The reality and tangibility of these prison cells, with their metal, hieroglyphs, and memories, began to dissolve the more time I spent in the cleaning, shedding light, and listening.
I was reminded of the “Allegory of the Cave,” from Plato’s the Republic. Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality.
Fleeting flat shadows become reality to those chained. When light is shed and they are exposed to the actual form, an opportunity emerges, yet remains nearly impossible to seize and break out of ingrained thought patterns.
Bringing back the light has an empowering aspect to it as well. The mind becomes a place of solace. Alone with ghosts, this kind of monk-like existence offers a beautiful and pure isolation. Matt Weston’s responsive audio composition participates and suggests a metaphysical transformation. The power of the space of thoughts - hallucination, and consciousness evades the simplicity of the metal grid, escaping the blatant traps of the metal maze.
Video situated from within one cell and projected onto a far wall outside the cell is meant to elicit the sensation for a viewer of being both inside and outside of the jail. The light is refracted through the plastic to produce a blurry effect.
The reel-to-reel sample invites the possibility of lightness – a reminder of the exterior world. It highlights the era of the most recent time when these cells were in use while calling into question the narratives present in the space. The combination of audio sources plays with the psychology and mental states of the space and structure.
