Mirror / Echo / Tilt

A public participatory performance

Mirror / Echo / Tilt is a performance and video collaborative project between APT artist Shaun Leonard, Melanie Crean, Sable and Elyse Smith, educators, and individuals affected by the criminal justice system. Using performance prompts related to the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, the group will translate stories of detention into movement and sound. Performative vignettes were recorded in an empty prison and vacant courthouse, experimenting with the relation of context, perspective and meaning. This work marked by voice, meter, pause, and syntax pose the questions: What does it mean to enact and to activate? How do we measure our collective complicity in both systemic exertions of violence/trauma and the legacy of constructed fictions?

The project investigates the range of factors contributing to cycles of police confrontation and incarceration, while questioning how images of people caught in those cycles are constructed through the media. Working toward a series of videos, performances, and a toolkit that reframes personal narratives of imprisonment, we insert counter narratives told through first person voice into the dominant media discourse, which commonly alienates and criminalizes black and brown bodies. By working with new forms of participatory engagement, we also aim to facilitate the sharing of perspective needed for polarized groups to discuss and enact change in seemingly impenetrable systems of justice.

The project will result in an exhibition, performance series, and annotated compilation of process and methods.