4B — Thursday, March 9, 2017 the b-side The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Who is this narrator? What is the accent? I’m so scared. The way he said “firing squad” just made me want to cry. Eerie. The death penalty beds. I’m going to cry. This man, Hank, has been on death row for 17 years and he’s still cracking jokes. I’m just going to leave this here: So many things that the police does are illegal. Hank looks so tired. His arms are chubby but his cheeks are hollow. Still terrified of this narrator’s tone; it is CHILLING. Here’s Hank’s story: This man was accused of triple homicide of his girlfriend and her two children. Though he denies the crime to this day, he was sentenced to death row. With 20 minutes of his execution, in the “death house,” Hank said his last goodbyes, and then he was saved. “The only thing was that they didn’t kill me.” He was pardoned by the Supreme Court just moments before his schedule execution. Now, Hank is back on death row. His holding cell is five steps away from the gurney. Nothing about this is right. They feed these inmates around the clock. “Time really has no meaning in here.” Nobody washes the prison windows; inmates can’t receive a clear view of the outside world, neither literally nor figuratively. I cannot go into detail here without breaking down, and I have no relation to the issue of death row aside from watching this show right now. I feel sick. Outsiders are not allowed to view the inner areas of death row housing. Hank describes them as a house of “human bondage and human suffering. A bad place.” Interesting take: A chef at death row commissioned to cook people’s last-ever meals. Can you imagine? Cooking meals for criminals awaiting a planned execution. How anyone eats just minutes before their certain death is beyond my comprehension. Hank is smart. I feel nauseous and I haven’t seen any blood. — TESS GARCIA Werner Herzog’s ‘On Death Row’ in this series, three daily arts writers in varying states of mind do the same activity and write about it. Oh my god, why is my spell check correcting into French. Moving on. For posterity: I feel very strange. Sort of tingly, really. Ah, it is begining now. Dramatic string music and a pan shot of a prison table with Bibles. This surely portents much. Werner Hertz- og is talking now, and I have to listen. He has such a grave, dramatic voice — I am bound to heed to it. The death-row inmate seems like such a congenial fellow, until he starts talking about, like, the fact that he was convicted of tripple homicide. “How familiar are you with the details of the execution?” Herzog to DRI — jesus christ Werner, you don’t go gently do you? “Could that be more Ameri- can?” asked Tess about the last meal of a hamburger and fries, “much like the death penalty” thought I. (To be read with thick Bavarian accent): “God, this is really depressing. Why does this exist (re: the death pen- alty)?” (Also, see “Get it Right: Privatize Executions” by Michigan’s own Arthur Miller.) “His cheeks are really hollow” says the Style editor. “No shit,” says someone in the back of my cerebrum. It is interesting that the inmate’s most vivid descriptions are about food. Why is someone vacuming right now? “Yeah I see your point” The concept of being led to death on a timeline is excruciating to me. To see the specter of death land on your bedside, to measure each second until that great abyss of unknowability is perhaps the most terrifiying thing after the abyss in the first place “This guy is still on death row” says buzzed. “This show was five years ago” “Is his name Frank?” says Tess “Hank says” buzzed. “What is going on with this family” Herzog after learn- ing the man’s son is charged with kidnapping. (update, he was later aquitted) Tbh I should stop just quoting things I hear. A journalist is now describing the staggering wounded walk of a murder victim. This really is a downer. There was just a minute of silence on the episode. very effecrive use of abscene “I don’t have a problem with the death penalty” says TV journalist. “fuck journalists” says a not-TV journalist This inmate just made a reference to medieval his- tory. Templars “Skinner tends to get lost in obscure historical tales” Herzog This is probably too long now. I’ll stop. He has a very distictive nervous laugh — Daily Arts Writer so like i’m shitfaced rn and i came into this apartment expecting a dandy ol good time (:^]) but the second we popped this on, shit got reeaaaaaaal — i went into this situation thinking it’ll be some regular BBB but, and perhaps it’s because i am (again) fairly shitfaced, i feel like a level and candor is appropriate for what the fuck we’re watching rn. wenrer herzog’s thick and distinct german accent has been haunting most of my night as he pries into the nitty gritty details of the squalor death row inmates face. this man, hank, just ruminated over how he went through a last meal and his last rites and prepared for his eventual death until a judge issued him a stay on his case 20 minutes before his execution ?? wtf ?? this was a terrible idea wow “are you high?” “i think so” “are you drunk” “yeah but i don’t wanna be” “this shit got me fucked up guys” we binged episodes of chef’s table to feel better oops :^) — Daily Arts Writer local leadership to empower communities in a sustainable way. She works with Youth Development in the Community Arts Department where she coordinates photography programming for 5th to 8th grade students in Detroit where they take field trips and learn to use DSLR cameras, hoping to cultivate passion and skills that may help students find educational and employment opportunities as they mature. Her outreach also involves starting art clubs at schools where funding or access to the arts may be limited. “I’ve gotten what I’ve learned through college and through art school and now I’m giving it back to the community,” Borromeo said. From Borromeo’s studio in Ypsilanti she works on other independent and collaborative art projects. She was recently featured in the “Vagina Show” in Detroit, an exhibition centered around intersectionality, or the way social identities interact and open up space for multidimensional dialogue about various systems of oppression and discrimination. Borromeo is also involved in the curating of an anti-Trump show in Detroit. Additionally, she collaborates with community activists groups in Detroit, like Detroit Independent Freedom Schools, a movement that offers supplementary weekend education by volunteer teachers to aid those Detroit Public Schools students who struggle. She is also a member of the Detroiters’ Resistance to Trump and DMJ studio, a group of women artists who use art to tell stories of those who live in Detroit and bring art to non-traditional spaces and neighborhoods. However, the project that seems to be most reflective of Borromeo’s artistic journey is one which seeks to provide a cultural exchange between Houston and Detroit. She co-founded a show in Houston last year called “Art to Art” that showcased the fashion, hip-hop and art of local artists, and she hopes to foster a cultural exchange between the two cities, ideally having people from Detroit visit Houston and vice versa. Borromeo highlights interdisciplinary and intersectionality at the heart of her work. Such a multidimensional approach is clear in the work of the artists and activists she admires. She spoke of Antonio Cosme, who weaves his public and street art with community organizing, and of Adrian Piper, who Borromeo said was, “basically everything I want to be ever,” expressing admiration for Piper’s strength as an artist, philosopher and her exploration and expression of what it means to be a light-skinned black woman. Borromeo views art as a way of educating, informing and inspiring those who may not otherwise have the access to such knowledge, touching on the universal quality of what she does. She suggested that art was maybe more “digestible” to some than say, reading a newspaper. “It’s a very special situation to be an artist, especially during this time because not everyone has the capacity to read the newspaper, maybe not everyone knows how to read. But art — but everyone kind of understands imagery — understands what a sound is, understands what movement is and so it can strike people in an emotional way that’s very different than just cut-and- dry stuff. I think artists just have a very strong role to play, especially in just empowering other people.” ARTIST From Page 3B had both enjoyed and learned from it — though I had been expecting this, as it isn’t the first time I have encountered Vanmechelen’s work, and have a CCP poster to prove it. Most of the remaining speakers capably presented their ideas, though at a month’s remove I would have difficulty telling you what they all spoke on without my notes. I won’t touch on everyone here (and soon enough you’ll be able to watch the talks yourself online), but I will mention a few moments which I feel are pertinent to my point. The artist Sophia Brueckner, now an Art and Design assistant professor, perhaps indirectly addressed the principal concern at the heart of this piece: The place of optimism. “Critical optimism” was the way she described her approach (in her case, to the potential impact of new technologies), a midway between “pure optimism” and “everything is terrible.” And perhaps that is the most healthy way to view things. But for myself, I fear that far too often optimism takes the place of action, that our dissatisfaction with the world can be sated through a simple, cheery belief that things will all work out — the problem lies in that, like trying to sate a physical hunger with pure glucose, this solution essentially has no substance. One of my principal issues with TED, I suppose, is that it gives a smattering of anodyne verbal offerings while rarely translating words into tangible gains. Its audiences are full of essentially well- meaning people who more than likely will never do anything about the very real problems discussed (and I do not exclude myself from this group; and of course there are obviously others in any given TED audience who I would exclude, but here I speak generally). The conference’s theme was “Dreamer’s and Disrupters,” and my concern is that the former perhaps overbore the latter to an unhealthy degree. While a TED conference indulges in the dopamine rush of what seems to me an extreme, often irrational optimism, I’m unable to overcome the feeling that the whole of our civilization is careening towards some grisly wreck. The tragedy is greater because I feel that this wreck is probably avertable if we simple managed to rouse ourselves to action. But maybe it’s not, and maybe all that will be left one day of this pleasant little jaunt around the park of liberal democracy are the steel skeletons that were once our cities, skyscraper tombstones whistling in the wind. Oh well. Of course, this is probably a hyperbolic thing to wonder — I do that sometimes. But I’m not the first to think it, and I won’t be the last, and someday one of us is bound to be right. The inadequacy of mere talk turned out to be perhaps my biggest take- away from the conference, but this isn’t to say that the feeling is merited equally by all the presenters. Many of the speakers do engage in exactly the sort of concrete, tangible altering of the world that I’m advocating. Scott Matzka has become an ALS advocate. Erika Newman is trying to cure cancer. Abdul El-Sayed is the Health Commissioner for the city of Detroit — a few days after the talk the 32-year-old announced his candidacy for governor. All of these people do real work to improve the world. But one of the things they all have in common is they strive to use science to address material issues. For the artists of the conference, the impact they can have was far less obvious, and far more abstract — all of which raises the much larger question of art’s role in changing the world. In what ways, in the light of all the wrong that exists, can what we do as artists be ultimately meaningful? I don’t have the answer. But what I do know is this: We have to believe art means something. The alternative is negation and despair. TEDX From Page 3B From Borromeo’s studio in Ypsilanti she works on other independent and collaborative art projects Most of the remaining speakers capably presented their ideas, though at a month’s remove I would have difficulty telling you what they all spoke on without my notes INTERESTED IN WRITING FOR ARTS? Email arts@michigdandaily.com for an application.