What to the Prisoner is the 4th of July?

In my performative-lecture presenting recent works created with materials charged through the history of their production, I connect how we capture people in images with how we capture people politically. The lecture format is half jeremiad and half manifesto peculated by visual media. The body of research I will focus on has been developed through the use of materials produced with prison labor. Through these works, the connections between how we portray people and the stories within our materials will tell the story of democracy’s holes and language gaps. The ghost in the text rears its head. The life or death of any system relies upon the metaphors it puts forward; we must then wrestle with democracy’s metaphors. To create a democratic and equitable system, we must attend to how the images and stories we create produce our future.