>(below info reposted from event website)
The New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University present the free public program
Should You Ever Happen to Find Yourself in
SOLITARY: Wry Fancies & Stark Realties
An All-Day Wonder Cabinet and Symposium
with Tony Kushner, The Yes Men, Mike Daisy,
Joshua Foer, Walter Murch, Catherine Chalmers,
Breyten Breytenbach, Robert Hillary King,
Juan E. MÃ ©ndez, Scarlet S. Kim, and many others
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17, 2012
10:45 a.m. till 8:30 p.m.
NYU's Cantor Film Center
36 E. 8th St. (off University Place)
Free & Open to the Public
Gradually, almost without anyone's even having taken notice, the United States has become one of the most frequent and extensive practitioners of solitary confinement anywhere in the world, at any time in history. The Vera Institute of Justice put the number of individuals being held in this manner, according to many experts a harrowing form of torture in and of itself, at over 80,000 (based on figures from 2005, one of the most recent years for which we have reliable information). According to Solitary Watch, "far from a last resort used for the "worst of the worst,' solitary confinement has become a control strategy of first resort in many prisons and jails." (New York City's Rikers Island alone has 990 isolation cells.) "Today inmates can be placed in complete isolation for months or years not only for violent acts but for possessing contraband, testing positive for drug use, ignoring orders, or using profanity. Thousands of prisoners are held in solitary because they have been named as gang members by other inmates who are rewarded for their information. Others have ended up in solitary because they have untreated mental illnesses, are children in need of "protection,' are gay or transgender, are Muslim, have unsavory political beliefs, or report rape or abuse by prison officials."
For this public program, the latest in an annual series of all-day
Wonder Cabinets, the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU,
teaming up this time with NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge, will
initially approach the issue, as is its perennial wont, from a sort of
slant, with "Dreams of Solitaire." Starting at 10:45 in the morning,
we will ask eminent individuals from a variety of disciplines to
imagine how they might endeavor to keep from going crazy were they ever
to find themselves condemned to such a terrible fate. Thus, among
others, those we will be hearing from will be:
-- playwright Tony Kushner
-- "identity correction" activist duo The Yes Men
-- author and memory champion Joshua Foer
-- film and sound editor Walter Murch
-- digital visionary Carl Skelton
-- monologist Mike Daisey
-- insect photographer Catherine Chalmers
-- the poet and translator Alastair Reid
-- avant garde mosaicist Samantha Holmes
-- the mathematician and YouTube sensation Vi Hart (via several of her short videos)
-- biologist and author of Ignorance: How It Drives Science, Stuart Firestein
Around 3:00 pm, we will pivot so as to hear from a quartet of people who actually have spent extended periods of time in solitary confinement
(it turns out that most of the fantasies we have of the sorts of things
we might do to keep from crumpling under the pressure are of little use
in real life). These will include:
-- Breyten Breytenbach, the renowned Afrikaner poet
and painter and human rights activist who spent seven years in South
African prisons for his anti-apartheid activities;
-- Tim Blunk, who spent seven years in solitary for
exposing an FBI sting operation while serving thirteen years in prison
for his role in the Resistance Conspiracy case;
-- Robert Hillary King, only freed member of the
Angola 3, a former Black Panther who spent 29 of his 31 years at
Louisiana's notorious Angola prison in solitary confinement, most of
that time on charges from which he was eventually exonerated; and
-- Shane Bauer, one of the three Americans hikers
captured and held last year on the Iranian border, who spent four months
in solitary before his eventual release, after which he covered
conditions at California's notorious Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison
for Mother Jones (he will be represented by a short film made on that assignment).
At 5:30 pm we'll hear about the philosophical, human rights, and legal implications of the appalling surfeit of solitary confinement in the United States today from the likes of:
-- Lisa Guenther, a philosopher from Vanderbilt University, who will draw on ideas developed in her forthcoming book, Social Death and its Afterlives: A Critical Phenomenolgy of Solitary Confinement;
-- Juan E. MÃ ©ndez, the celebrated human rights
lawyer who himself suffered a harrowing stint in solitary during the
Dirty Wars in his Argentine homeland, who will put the U.S. situation in
a wider international context from his perch as the UN Special
Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment; and finally, closer to home,
-- Scarlet S. Kim, one of the co-authors of the NY
Civil Liberties Union's recent report "Boxed In: The True Cost of
Extreme Isolation in New York's Prisons."
The program will likely conclude around 8:30 pm.
Check for program details & updates at NYiHumanities.org
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
(no tickets; simply first-come, first-in)
For all press queries, contact Stephanie Steiker at
the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU:
212.998.2101; stephanie. Email address removed .