April 3, 2006

When I got to entrance right away I saw a guy who looked familiar, J P, an employee- someone who’s not a guard- but in a slightly different category. He told me that he came in especially to administer the materials and if anything wasn’t accounted for, we’d be up until 11 tonight looking for it. And I didn’t mention it then, but getting the supplies was more for them to use in their cells rather than in class because class is more of a discussion. I had called earlier in the week and talked to a higher up and he said that this would be the case, but I figured I already went to the trouble of bringing them in, although I really that it was just so stupid of me to offer the fact that I could in any way get them the materials they might need to do this project. I feel like I made a promise I couldn’t keep.

J P had to come in to work just to watch over the supplies that I had brought that caused so many problems last time. I got a security clearance finally, but the men are going to be unable to use them in their cells- which makes the possibility of their really using them towards their projects very unlikely.

B immediately made this annoying statement when I explained it to them, “let me take care of this. I know who to talk to.” He doesn’t know it, but I have lost faith in his ability to really do this, even thought he might want to say that- its actually really annoying because it just makes the problem seem like it’s a matter of them taking care of everything- and ther is just this whole situation where the administration is mistrustful of them and they are mistrustful of the administration- so a fucking box of art supplies ends up sitting in a locked room with a guy waiting by it for 2 hours.

At one point the conversation led to an installation I had just seen by the German artist Thomas Hirschhorn- I think it was because S brought up our government dealing with the war and problems in society by sweeping everything under the rug. I described the Hirsschhorn installation as being so powerful to me because it actually made that exact point and he wasn’t afraid to really announce that statement with the most gory images of the human destruction caused as a result of the war in Iraq. I talked about the fact that he was German and the history of the war that is more recent in that country- and then S said that he had seen a show a long time ago of photographs of lynchings- and he said that he thought the photographs were more powerful than the real thing- because there’s something that happens when you see the expression on peoples faces completely frozen. Jay then mentioned a photograph he had seen recently of a woman who’s son had been killed and he described her eyes – the sockets of which were so completely filled with water that at the point the photo was shot, they were about to gush over the edge.

We talked about the difference in thinking about war- that someone from Germany might have and that idea of German guilt that a lot of people think comes from having seen a total tragedy which might have been averted in your recent past- and the fact that Germans have had to live with this – even into this generation where other people still think of them as guilty- and Bush said suddenly, “Oh! It just hit me what he’s trying to do- by showing that piece- as a German, he is saying to America- hey, we had to wear what we did and now you’re going to have wear it too. You can’t forget what you’ve done.”

As I was leaving P walked me down the hall- he didn’t explain but he said he needed to walk with me down the hallway and it totally freaked me out. I asked him what the problem was, but he didn’t say and about halfway down, he said ok- and then I said I’d appreciate if he walked me the whole length—only because I didn’t really get what was going on. I got some strange looks from the guards and the other men leaning on the desk at the end of the hall by the stairs.