Death Row Visit
There
is a TV and a telephone.
On TV the audience can see a video loop (length
of the clip 1:28:58).
In our media flooded world - in the days of reality TV- we see a lot of unknown
faces. We see them briefly and forget them. We might not see them as human beings
it is probably more likely that we see them as abstract and creatures from another
world.
A flood of inmates' pictures is what the audience watches on this screen, too. Yet here the viewer is addressed to in a closer manner: the telephone starts ringing right in front of them and a person inside (TV) waits for the answer. The ringing stops and the viewer watches another person being executed and fading away.
The
telephone and the TV indicate two different rooms/ worlds.
The telephone
is outside. It is in our world. It resembles the contact to the outer world: to
a private visitor or the states' authority.
The TV is the inner world the
medium to look into the death row. It is both: the visitor's cabin and the execution
chamber.
The video:
1. A fast succession of death row inmates' pictures
2. One frame becomes
as a still image
3. The telephone in the outside world starts ringing - and
the hanging up is audible.
4. The prisoner turns red, yellow and green and
eventually melts.
5. We see another fast succession of the inmates
6.
Another still of a prisoner
7. And so on
The
lottery style of the prisoners' still image selection after a quick succession
of frames, not only hints at the sometimes very suspicious trials yet makes the
audience take a closer look at the individual, too. The ringing of the real telephone
and the temporary halt of the inmate reaches further towards the viewer. And then
the person changes his colour following Fred A. Leuchters instructions for using
his lethal injection machine:
red > readiness
yellow > injecting
in progress
green > injection/ execution completed successfully
Like
in a videogame the person is disappearing. Unreal. Yet it is a true person.
Safehouse Arts Space Gallery, Belfast:
K-Salon, Berlin:
