ABOUT GLOBAL IN/JUSTICE Uiversity of Bern
LEAKING IMAGES IMÁGENES EN FUGA (leaking images) as a research and art collective have done a some insights during 2018 and 2019 on some colombian detention centers in order to exchange some of ideas and feeling about freedom using sound without a traditional face to face meeting (which obvioulsy could be quite difficult for security reasons). Participants: Javier Ramos: -Product Designer (B.A.) -Art Historian (M.A.) -Art History Researcher (Ph.D.) -Sound Artist Camilo Igua: -Philosopher (B.A.) -Art Management (M.A.) -Art Social Worker Alan Santamaría: -Media Artist (B.A.) -Combined Artistic Languages (M.A.) -Media Researcher As a media, sound that could be share in and out of detention centers trhough oneiric language (dreams and nightmares), this has been used in order to allow a better Exchange without stignma of crime. On the other hand, sound as a communication media helped us to keep narratives from oneiric world as a kind of image (a piece of a whole imaginary world) to be leaked to the outside world.
When we talk about justice, in a country like Colombia, where 93% of crimes remained unpunished but you still have crowded penitentiary centers… it appears a huge contradiction.
LEAKING IMAGES: Using this idea as a form of leakage of information, We begin a work with two penitentiaries centers in Bogotá, Colombia. It was not easy at the beginning, but we figured out that sounds can find a way out in a easier way that visual images. Hence, we decided to try a way of dematerialization of sound images (recorded behind bars, inside jails) to be reconfigured in not only sound again but also visual images. In late 2019 we started to have our first leaked images and we could exhibit our first insights on a Museum here in Bogotá. https://vimeo.com/380283889 We not only want to extract this information (sound recordings) as an extractivistic method for our project, during a year now, we have encouraged this group of persons private of liberty to learn about sound recording, sound editing and sound narratives in order to find many different outputs to be transcoded outside jail limits. This sort of open class with them have gave us the opportunity to share with them different ideas about the role of an artist or a researcher on society and on the other hand a full picture about how society as well have impede people private of its liberty to express itself, collaborate or re-signify its role in life.
Behind bars in Colombia there are not just “criminals” many innocents, poor, or people who committed a crime because of its ignorance and never have the chance to find a good lawyer or some kind of government help to explain their situation. In conclusion the experience of being inside a prison in Colombia is not different of the unequal picture outside, its far worst. Part of this phenomena is related to the disconnection among society out and inside bars. Since institutions insist to offer peace, not with peace it self but with numbers of captured people, people that enter to a prisons seams not to have a chance to chance or to have a fair trial. In a society that have many needs, prisons are the last. Using oneiric language and sound narrative we have found a way that images can be leaked from inside to outside. People inside prisons still having dreams but not nightmares, maybe because their minds try to Project different realities out of its prison nightmare. This instrumentalization of “dreaming” as a sort of way out, need to be shared because is oneiric narrative is easier to found no boundaries or differences between freedom or not freedom. People outside prison, in apparently freedom, have find a way to question about their own prison, and then is where experiences outside and inside seams to find a common path.