Aug 15th 2015

Landon Brown and the Chicago-based arts project 96 Acres are pleased to present PARK, a large-scale data visualization, public art, and radio broadcast event that will occupy 1/2 mile of public street parking adjacent to Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the largest county jail in the United States.

The event will feature a Vocalo (Chicago Public Media, 90.7) broadcast of B.B. King’s 1970 performance, Live in Cook County Jail, through the AM/FM stereos of over one-hundred crowd-sourced automobiles, color-coded to visualize the racial statistics of today’s inmate population there. The live radio broadcast will also invite visitors to contribute personal memories and stories connected to the history of the Cook County Jail in relation to Little Village and Chicago’s West side communities. These recording stations will function as places to socialize, and dialogue around issues related to incarceration and its social and political impact. Recorded stories will become part of an ongoing archive by the arts project and PARK collaborator 96 Acres.

Evoking the political history of self-organized prisoner rights movements and the complex relationship between culture, community, and spectacle, PARK is a vehicle for challenging the politics of representation at a time when incarceration plays an increasingly disproportionate role in the lives of specific communities in Chicago and throughout the nation.

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