NIGHT & DAY

“Decarcerated” space is sometimes used to repair or educate, [but] it can also reinforce trauma.

Night and Day grapples with the notion of repurposing previous sites of incarceration as a processes of decarceration, specifically at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.  While this “decarcerated” space is sometimes used to repair or educate, it can also reinforce trauma. The piece experiments with juxtapositions and transitions that reflect the penitentiary as an entertainment space at night and an educational space during the day. The way the site is structured and its materiality – the very characteristics that historically made it effective for torture and surveillance – also make the space “ideal” (and it is marketed as such) for violent and problematic events. The experimental recordings featured in the piece come from daytime tours of the space, Halloween nights featuring “prison guard zombies” lurking behind penitentiary walls, and old school speakeasies hosted in cell blocks..

CREATOR
Florence Madenga

AFFILIATION
Doctoral Student at the Annenberg School for Communication; Fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication; Graduate Associate at Perry World House

RESEARCH
Florence Madenga's work, through multi-modal methods and decolonial frameworks, explores the evolution and boundaries of media, identity, and power as they pertain to expanding and/or contracting globalization. Her primary research sites are located in the United States and Zimbabwe. 

Background photo of Cell Interior 01 at Eastern State Penitentiary, courtesy Adam Jones, PhD, CC by SA 3.0

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