ABSTRACT
This chapter examines objectifying tendencies of Western thought that encourage an understanding of human beings as things. As slavery objectified African American lives into commoditised things, mass incarceration objectifies young black inmates by associating them primarily with their presumed criminality. The Richmond City Jail (RCJ) was built in the mid-1960s to alleviate overcrowding in the small municipal jail and the notorious Virginia State Penitentiary on Spring Street. In the old RCJ, the sound of suffering in the form of crying, pleading, singing, rapping and chatter was omnipresent through the space’s open acoustics. Visitation in the RCJ was conducted through a row of eight thick Plexiglas windows with holes drilled through them, located at the end of the cramped lobby. In the jail studio programme, an “atmosphere” might emerge when residents intuitively pursued the actions that felt right at each moment, as guided by stylistic and social constraints.
