Contributed by Veronica Paredes
Patrisse Cullors presented her work to iMAP last week as part of the Visiting Artist Lecture Series. With a background in dance and having trained with Augusto Boal, founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, Cullors challenged the audience to engage in a provocative conversation about theory/ practice in embodied ways. Cullors asked us after screening a short documentation video of her latest performance work, Stained, where in your body did you feel a reaction while you were watching? Stained explores difficult themes of violence, trauma and injustice — making this question a heavy one. Gesturing toward her own body-based practice, Cullors pushed on the conventions of the artist’s lecture while generously sharing her experiences of creating art and political movements in a space where activism, community and performance meet. The work of Stained is far from over, after reading this interview, please visit the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in LA Jails and look out for future activity at the Coalition’s Facebook page.
What work did you present at the iMAP Visiting Artist Lecture Series?
Stained looks at the ways in which state violence and incarceration impact the family, the individual and the community. It does that by using audio overlay of: documents that my mother wrote down while my brother was incarcerated at the LA County Jails; documents that the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence uploaded on their website, [which include testimonies] from Sheriff Lee Baca, Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, along[side] my mother’s testimonies at the Citizen’s Commission on Jail Violence July meeting. The piece is a way to look at trauma and resilience.
What inspired you to explore this story from your own life?
I’m learning to own my story more. I grew up in the middle of the War on Drugs and the War on Gangs. The ways that our community had to interface with the police, and with jails and prisons, left me often feeling depressed – and [there was] a lot of pain and suffering. I have used art my whole life (first, I grew up dancing as a trained dancer), and I use [it] as a way to cope with the pain. But as I’ve gotten older and (through) my politicization, I’ve realized I want to use my art to speak my pain, but also to larger conditions at hand.
Stained looks at my brother’s incarceration at LA County Jails. When he was incarcerated in those jails he was beat up by sheriff deputies, he blacked out after he was tased and choked. He woke up in a pool of his own blood. And that impacted our family so deeply it changed the way I understood this place. In that moment, I said to myself, this place isn’t about healing communities, it’s actually about destroying communities. So, how do I make art that shows that? But that also asks: what do we do? Not only what do I do as an individual, but what do we do as a community to create places and spaces that are about healing, that are about challenging the current system of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, classism, and all these isms that inform our lives and perpetuate trauma? How do we build resilience? How do we build that into our art and into our practice?
Where’s the project today? How has it transformed?
Stained went on tour all of last year and basically birthed a movement. The Coalition to End Sheriff’s Violence in LA Jails, which is a campaign that is made up of family members, deputy on inmate abuse survivors, clergy, attorneys and concerned community members. Our main focus right now is on getting permanent civilian oversight over the Sheriff’s Department. There is not one civilian oversight body that has the power to hold the Sheriff’s Department accountable. We want to implement that permanent civilian oversight. I believe that Stained was able to lead myself, my family and, more importantly, the rest of the community to action to say – we need to do more than just this art piece.
We now have a national petition because LA is the largest jailer in the world and it is also the most violent in the country. We are asking the entire country to sign on to this petition that says civilian oversight is necessary and it needs to be implemented now. It urges the County Board of Supervisors to implement that civilian review board because they’re the ones that can make this happen. We need three votes from them to make it happen.
We are asking everybody to go onto our website. Watch the video. Sign the petition. Send it out to all of your networks.
Bio
Patrisse Cullors is the founder and lead organizer of the Coalition to End Sheriff’s Violence in LA Jails. She is also the director and co-producer of Stained: An Intimate Portrayal of State Violence.
Further Information:
Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in LA Jails
Press Coverage 1 2
Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence
Thanks to Holly Willis, Mark-Anthony Johnson, Karl Baumann, Kai M. Green