Last Week’s Charrette

by Tucker

Image Credit: Tempestt Hazel.

Last week CTJM hosted a charrette at Experimental Station, a neighborhood arts and ecology center in the Woodlawn area. We were visited by Tempestt Hazel of Sixty Inches From the Center, a web archive documenting art in Chicago. Below is their report from the event and some photos they took.

After nearly four decades of build up, our city’s history with police torture reached a turning point in 2010 with the trial of Jon Burge, the former commander of the Chicago Police Department accused of coercing confessions out of over one hundred wrongfully accused individuals through inhumane methods. Burge’s sentencing in January brought a small, in terms of years of incarceration, yet significant sense of justice to a series of acts that devastated an inexcusable number of individuals, families and an entire community since 1972.

Although Burge is behind bars for what he did over the years, the residue of his actions still exists. In an effort to call attention to these injustices and the long road it took to get the voices of those affected heard, the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project was created. This initiative is calling on artists, community members and organizers, activists and those directly affected to come together and create a monumental public act or object dedicated to the cause and its effects. They are currently accepting proposals. On August 7th, I took a trip toExperimental Station during one of the charrettes, a design workshop and brainstorming session where participants took part in stream of consciousness writing from prompts, tossed around the possibilities of how these memorials could manifest and Chicago artist Preston Jackson shared his experience with creating public memorials.  The following are some photos from that session.

Interested in submitting your idea for a monument, joining the efforts or just learning more about the project?  Visit http://chicagotorture.org.

 

(Image Credit: Tempestt Hazel.)