By calling my practice “legislative art,” I emphasize concrete policy change as the goal of political art, and suggest that artists can and should engage with government systems. My work, intended for political transformation, includes video, photography and performance, as well as lobbying, campaigning, community organizing, and prison monitoring.

My research centers on the creation and use of criminal categories (“the worst of the worst,” “super-predators,” “sex offenders,”) and how they are used to justify extreme punishments that violate human rights and defy common-sense. Such classifications produce false narratives about why crimes are committed and to whom, and therefore fail to address the tremendous harm that comes from violence. They also mask the structural processes that lead to crime or criminalization. It is this territory—demonization—where we are taught, through moral panics, conditioning, and aesthetics, to feel such disgust that we react with extreme and damaging policies, against people, usually marginalized themselves, who have no inherent commonalities except their treatment by others.

I work with people labeled “sex offenders” who must register with the state weekly, quarterly or yearly, are subject to severe regulations on housing, work, and employment, and are subject to both public space and housing banishment—for years (usually for life) after they have served their time. It is this narrative I am trying to convey through political and cultural activism: these restrictions do not achieve the policy goals of improving public safety or preventing victimization, and are particularly onerous for formerly incarcerated people who are poor, have disabilities, experience mental illness, and/or who already face discrimination in jobs, housing and education. Rather than holding people accountable, and then supporting them as they seek productive lives, public conviction registries drag people and their families into poverty, housing insecurity, homelessness, and isolation. Registries also systematize an ongoing police presence into homes and neighborhoods, often resulting in arrests and incarceration for technical violations.

Fear and repulsion are a currency of politics, binding people against those we deem “not us.” Policies designed to enforce banishment and social death stem from classification and category errors that traditional non-profits and foundations structurally can’t and won’t address. Unraveling these entrenched social forms requires historicism, disruptions in framing and representation, and the ability to simultaneously recognize and undermine categories. Art can contribute to the project of repositioning our systems of classification and identification, and change what Ranciere calls the “distribution of the sensible,” the process by which excluded people can achieve legitimacy and emerge as political subjects. Thus, my research also includes studying the legislature, the media, public opinion, persuasion, and community organizing as artistic subject matter, both in theory and practice.

I’m currently organizing a campaign with the Chicago 400—people who have a duty to register weekly because they are homeless. We are building an alliance of advisors and supporters—and focusing especially on building partnerships with victim advocates. We want to give legislators encouragement and backing to push for an agenda that truly supports survivors, prevents victimization, and rehabilitates and restores people who harm others. Many legislators fully know these laws are wrong—it is simply too politically-damaging to reform them, so we are working to transform the media/political landscape so it is less risky for them to do so.

Political organizing and media work is fast-paced, terrifying and labor-intensive, but the needs and possibilities of the moment are enormous. In addition to media strategy, we are bringing this issue into cultural and public discussion—through the arts, theater, audio, and event programming that gives people the opportunity to meet and learn about people they otherwise would completely dismiss. We are making maps, oral histories, story banks, and a stand-up comedy series, performed by individuals “who may or may not be on the registry.” I continue to work on Brechtian performances featuring comedy, testimony, panel discussions, and choral singing on the theme of the registry.

These efforts, at the edge of political viability, require artistic and symbolic responses that disarm and educate audiences, and dampen the terrors nurtured in the public sphere. I produce work that makes practical use of our shared encyclopedic, painful knowledge of the system, and the logics and mechanics of policies that promote public shaming and social death, including vernacular calling cards; taking small groups of witnesses to the site where people register; performing the registry at people’s houses; and transforming McDonald’s into a safe space for supporting people through their most fraught and difficult situations. My research-driven, educational work utilizes a range of representational strategies to dissemble common categories and overdetermined associations. The work trusts the value of engaged scholarship, genre-shifting approaches to advocacy, and the capacity of art to help unravel catastrophes of thought, action, and policy.