Installations • 15 Minutes of Fame • Nuit Blanche Toronto 2008




15 Minutes of Fame is an interactive installation featuring:
a bare prison bed; blanket, sheet & pillow; and a standard-issue prison suitcase containing assorted personal items . . .

photos by: Jordan Ellis; Randolph Croft; & Cat McPherson

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Visitors are invited to:
  • open the suitcase; consider, select and arrange items upon and around the bed to create a new installation - a personal artistic statement about incarceration...

  • present and discuss their installation with other visitors

  • write about their installation in the Book of Fame - on site and open for everyone to read.

  • Other visitors are invited to write comments about
    any installations in the Book of Fame.

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After creating an installation, visitors discuss their work with the audience. The ensuing discussions and exchanges were fascinating.

Visitors explained why they had chosen to place an object in a given place, what they were trying to convey, how they felt about the prison bed, what role they themselves played within the installation and how the work affected them personally.

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The original intention was that each installation remain on display for a maximum of 15 minutes. However, audience response was so enthusiastic that many participants garnered far more than 15 minutes of fame . . .

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Installations are documented through digital photos
and posted
subsequently online.

    presented

    Amanta Scott


    with

    15 Minutes of Fame

    and

    Parallel Lines

    an interactive syncretic art installation

    Curated by
    Wayne Baerwaldt

    October 4th 2008
    330 Bay St, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Visitor response to this work was amazing.

    15 Minutes of Fame and Parallel Lines
    garnered over 2400 visitors
    throughout the evening.

    People were lined up around the block
    all night long.

    Artist's Statement:

    Parallel Lines is an ongoing series of photo-based encaustic paintings exploring the lines between the actual and the possible; the inner and the outer world; imprisonment versus freedom; and choice as a defining moment in our lives.

    Parallel Lines is the third project in a series of works featuring prison beds reclaimed from the former Kingston Penitentiary for Women. This rather unique opportunity arose through an art commission in which I was invited to create art utilizing waste from government buildings. Correctional Services Canada proposed I utilize discarded prison beds and I was intrigued with the challenge.



    15 Minutes of Fame
    premiered at Art Gallery of Algoma in 2004


    15 Minutes of Fame
    According to
    Correctional Service of Canada:

    There are:
    52 federally managed penitentiaries
    and
    17 community correctional centres
    in Canada.

    On a typical day there are:

    12,600 offenders in the institutions;
    and
    8,500 offenders supervised
    in the community
    by

    71 parole officers.

    There are
    175 halfway houses across
    the country.

    Federal offenders represent
    5% of the total number of persons
    sentenced to custody in Canada
    and
    6% of offenders in the community.

    Canada spends $1.5 billion annually on the Federal correctional system. The annual cost of maintaining an offender ranges from $108,277 for maximum security to $41,583 in a community correctional centre with an overall average of $62,115.

    One in three inmates is serving a sentence of more than ten years.

    After serving a sentence the offender is deemed rehabilitated, to have paid his or her debt to society, and released back into the community.

    If so many are, or have been, deemed 'socially unacceptable', what's wrong with society?


    © Amanta Scott • www.amantascott.com
    Revised: Wednesday, September 9, 2009