Opening Reception: November 6th 2010, 6-9pm
This installation will fill the main floor of The Box wall-to-wall with 30 bunk beds, same as in over crowded California State Prisons--- where gymnasiums and cafeterias have been turned into dormitories housing 3 and 4 hundred prisoners. The exhibition will include 5 performance events –each one different--- all will take place within the prison bunk-bed installation. Each performance is an experiment in which the performers, the audience, and the performance material are inserted into this restrictive prison architecture.
 
Based in the Skid Row neighborhood, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a non-profit arts organization that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. 
The performance material, developed in LAPD’s workshops, articulates the performers inside understanding of how the prison system functions. 
 
OPENING RECEPTION 
November 6, Saturday, 6-9 pm 
@ The Box Gallery, Chinatown, 977 Chung King Road, LA 90012
Performance experiment #1. The opening will include performance material developed in LAPD workshops. The performance will take place in the installation. LAPD’s State of Incarceration project combines theater, installation and public education to examine the personal and social costs of incarceration in the US.  
 
PERFORMANCE 
November 12, Friday,  8 pm
@ The Box Gallery, Chinatown, 977 Chung King Road, LA 90012
Performance experiment #2. In State of Incarceration LAPD artists articulate the mental and physical challenges of incarceration and the resources needed to endure and recover from it. 
 
PERFORMANCE 
November 13, Saturday, 8 pm
@ The Box Gallery, Chinatown, 977 Chung King Road, LA 90012
Performance experiment #3. California has the greatest number of prisoners in the U.S.  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeal has ordered the State to reduce the prison population to 137% of capacity. 
 
PERFORMANCE 
November 19, Friday,  8 pm
@ The Box Gallery, Chinatown, 977 Chung King Road, LA 90012
Performance experiment #4. When released from state penitentiaries with $200 gate money, parolees are directed to Skid Row with the largest concentration of low cost housing in LA County. 
 
PERFORMANCE 
November 20, Saturday, 8 pm
@ The Box Gallery, Chinatown, 977 Chung King Road, LA 90012
Performance experiment #5. 33% of parolees released to the Los Angeles area settle in the 52 square block neighborhood of Skid Row.  
 
 
The main floor gallery will be installed wall to wall with prison bunk beds.  Video elements will be installed on the beds.   The basement gallery will include images charting the expansion of the prison population and new prison construction in California over the past 3 decades and the 21 year and counting history of the lawsuit challenging the quality of the health services available to inmates in the state’s over-crowded prisons.   In 2010 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that these conditions amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.”  Governor Schwarzenegger has appealed this ruling and the case will go to the Supreme Court. 
 
This exhibition’s goals include contributing to the public’s ability to visually and viscerally imagine the conditions resulting from policy choices that have made California the state with the largest prison population in the US.  Another goal is to create an opportunity for former prisoners to share their lived expertise, about the prison experience, the state of incarceration and how to survive it.  And the ultimate goal of the project is to create a moment of exchange and reflection on how we the people of California, as a state can recover from living in a state of incarceration.
 
LAPD’s History of Incarceration project combines theater, installation and public education to examine the personal and social costs of incarceration in the US.  Prior activities have taken place at various Skid Row locations and in parolee re-entry programs in the San Fernando Valley and Central Los Angeles.  The project will continue at Chuco Justice High School in Inglewood in December, and evening length performances at Highways Performance Space January 28 and 29.  The project will tour to parolee programs, theaters and museums in Arizona, New Mexico and New York in 2012-13.  History of Incarceration is a Creative Capital Project.  Funders of different phases of project activity include the National Endowment for the Arts, Department of Cultural Affairs, and Los Angeles, The Creation Fund of the National Performance Network, and The Bold and The Beautiful for their generous donation of 30 bunk beds.
 
 
About LAPD:
The Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a non-profit arts organization that was started in 1985 by artist John Malpede.  LAPD’s mission: creating performance work that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. LAPD is committed to creating performances and artworks that express the realities, hopes and dreams of people who live and work on Skid Row.