S.I.C. "Survival is a Crime" is a picture sequence that draws a trajectory through an apartment building, the staircase, the hallways, the inside of the apartment, the furniture, some objects, a comforter, and inside the inhabitant, a woman.
The total number of images is 16. The image of the face with a text: survival is a crime; repeat every five pictures, for two seconds, three times in the sequence. The sequence run for 21 seconds. Images will be projected on public screens like the ones on the Times Square screen above the NYPD. The pictures will run every 15 minutes for approximately twenty seconds, like an ad in the middle of a program. Ideally they will be running with this or a similar frequency twenty-four hours a day.
S.I.C. "Survival is a Crime" is part of my series: "The Other Around" dealing with strange presences close to the known, familiar and domestic space.
Rape survival is a crime penalized with silence. Silence as consequence of the shame. There is an implicit social agreement in which a woman has to protect her "honor". Returning alive from it or without visible wounds, supposes something of a collaboration or complicity It is a perversion that the victim of a crime is punished in addition of suffering it. She is supposed to oppose the rapist in some way even when this may increase the risk of loosing her life. Hollywood portraits raped women as heroics figures who fight for their dignity and end in the hospital or cemetery. Images of bloody rapes are constructed to nourish masculine imagination. Rape can be a source of sexual excitement and of pornography. The private space in the images has been disrupted by a strange presence. Images have been dislocated by being shown in a public space. For instance Times Square is disrupted by a private and violent story. S.I.C on a public screen becomes a dissent politizedpolitical ad, interrupting the program on that screen. A social battle will be played here, hidden scenes need to be shown on a public forum, a public square. The images may produce feelings of discomfort or uncertainty in visitors looking for entertainment. A face plus a sentence is a publicity strategy (politics, fashion,…) used to relate the viewer to the subject.
Rape is not private. "private" can be defined by the space of situation is under our own control. The boundaries of a raped person have been trespassed. As a result the space and the power over herself is lost, she becomes an alien for herself, another person, a foreigner with no place where to be, houseless.
On "SIC" we follow through the pictures a trajectory been left by a stranger entering into a building, an apartment, and the body of a person. A stranger? Entering into a body? Missing parts of the story for the viewer to fill up. The viewer as a detective. Police pictures, aesthetically uninteresting, with no glamour, just a document… a document of what? Rarely one will be able to tell what really happened from a picture. The context of the picture will help to determine our reading of it.
The criminal, the stranger was the only person that was there the same day that I was. Perhaps he will pass by Times Square area and see the pictures on a screen. What will he make out it? In the images, it is not his face as a “wanted” person but the face of his victim. Will he be possessed by the power of the images, enter into NYPD and confess the crime? Will he try to find the woman and kill her to erase from his memory what happened?. I am using a public screen as a trigger, to fight with my own weapons, images, a personal situation.
S.I.C. "Survival is a Crime" is a picture sequence that draws a trajectory through an apartment building, the staircase, the hallways, the inside of the apartment, the furniture, some objects, a comforter, and inside the inhabitant, a woman.
The total number of images is 16. The image of the face with a text: survival is a crime; repeat every five pictures, for two seconds, three times in the sequence. The sequence run for 21 seconds. Images will be projected on public screens like the ones on the Times Square screen above the NYPD. The pictures will run every 15 minutes for approximately twenty seconds, like an ad in the middle of a program. Ideally they will be running with this or a similar frequency twenty-four hours a day.
S.I.C. "Survival is a Crime" is part of my series: "The Other Around" dealing with strange presences close to the known, familiar and domestic space.
Rape survival is a crime penalized with silence. Silence as consequence of the shame. There is an implicit social agreement in which a woman has to protect her "honor". Returning alive from it or without visible wounds, supposes something of a collaboration or complicity It is a perversion that the victim of a crime is punished in addition of suffering it. She is supposed to oppose the rapist in some way even when this may increase the risk of loosing her life. Hollywood portraits raped women as heroics figures who fight for their dignity and end in the hospital or cemetery. Images of bloody rapes are constructed to nourish masculine imagination. Rape can be a source of sexual excitement and of pornography. The private space in the images has been disrupted by a strange presence. Images have been dislocated by being shown in a public space. For instance Times Square is disrupted by a private and violent story. S.I.C on a public screen becomes a dissent politizedpolitical ad, interrupting the program on that screen. A social battle will be played here, hidden scenes need to be shown on a public forum, a public square. The images may produce feelings of discomfort or uncertainty in visitors looking for entertainment. A face plus a sentence is a publicity strategy (politics, fashion,…) used to relate the viewer to the subject.
Rape is not private. "private" can be defined by the space of situation is under our own control. The boundaries of a raped person have been trespassed. As a result the space and the power over herself is lost, she becomes an alien for herself, another person, a foreigner with no place where to be, houseless.
On "SIC" we follow through the pictures a trajectory been left by a stranger entering into a building, an apartment, and the body of a person. A stranger? Entering into a body? Missing parts of the story for the viewer to fill up. The viewer as a detective. Police pictures, aesthetically uninteresting, with no glamour, just a document… a document of what? Rarely one will be able to tell what really happened from a picture. The context of the picture will help to determine our reading of it.
The criminal, the stranger was the only person that was there the same day that I was. Perhaps he will pass by Times Square area and see the pictures on a screen. What will he make out it? In the images, it is not his face as a “wanted” person but the face of his victim. Will he be possessed by the power of the images, enter into NYPD and confess the crime? Will he try to find the woman and kill her to erase from his memory what happened?. I am using a public screen as a trigger, to fight with my own weapons, images, a personal situation.