BLACK SITE #2

"BLACK SITE #2"

Inspired by the CIA's documented use of rap music as an element of sleep depravation torture, BLACK SITE #2 consists of a multi-media installation that hybridizes ad hoc detention with ad hoc performance. Two microphones are fed into sound exciters and surface transducers that turn wall and furniture elements into speakers. Visitors are invited to use the microphones to engage in a competition, a game, or any form of performance. Using components often deployed in video game production of 'virtual' experience, multiple levels of transduction create a range of output from audio to tactile effects. The installation references both the format of competitive MCing and techniques deployed against 'enemy combatants' in the War on Terror, in order to investigate the overlap of battle and play at the scale of individual bodies. This involves, of course, a play on the word black - which here references both the signification of Black identity invoked by rap music and the CIA terminology for a specific network of facilities. This hybridization of space for cultural production and militarized detention questions the role of language and performance in the interplay between normative civil society and military operations and technology.