- A look at the prison industrial complex in the US through the lens of house music and nightlife, proposing the dance floor as a space of personal and collective liberation, and new ways in which we could come together as a society.
- With a prison population of more than 2 million, the US is the world's biggest jailer. Coinciding with the escalation of mass incarceration in the 1980s, house music emerged from Black, Latinx and queer communities embattled by oppressive law enforcement policies. Bring Down The Walls looks at the prison industrial complex through the lens of house music and nightlife, proposing the dance floor as a space of personal and collective liberation, and new ways in which we could come together as a society.
Over the last four decades the prison population in the US has soared to more than 2 million. Through privatization and disproportionate targeting of people of color, the marginalized and the poor, the justice system has been used as a tool of oppression and the source of corporate profit. Today, 'the land of the free' is the world's biggest jailer. Coinciding with the escalation of mass incarceration in the 1980s, a new dance culture emerged from Black, Latinx and queer communities embattled by the criminal and law enforcement policies.
Bring Down The Walls looks at the US prison industrial complex through the lens of house music and nightlife. The connection between a system that locks the body up and music that sets it free comes from the years in which the director Phil Collins worked with a group of men incarcerated at Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. After access was revoked, he recorded a compilation of house classics with vocalists who have formerly been incarcerated, and in 2018 set up a communal space in the heart of Manhattan's court district dedicated to the struggle for social justice and prison abolition. During the day, discussions were led by people who have been directly impacted by the system, and those working to radically change or abolish it. At night, the space transformed into a dance party hosted by collectives from New York City's vibrant club scene.
Bringing these strands together, Bring Down The Walls reflects a coexistence of two fields of knowledge, the political/academic and the physical/experiential-one born out of education, advocacy and activism, the other through sharing time, space and energy- proposing the dance floor as a site of personal and collective liberation, and new ways in which we could come together as a society.
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