EXPOSED

Abstract

This hybrid paper/artist presentation is focused on the interactive documentary EXPOSED [https://unjustlyexposed.com], which provides a cumulative public record and evolving history of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on incarcerated people. EXPOSED documents the spread of COVID-19 over time, inside prisons, jails, and detention centers across the US, from the perspective of prisoners and their families. Original interviews combined with quotes, audio clips and statistics, collected from a comprehensive array of online publications and broadcasts, are assembled into an interactive timeline that, on each day, offers abundant testimony to the risk and trauma prisoners experience under coronavirus quarantine. EXPOSED launched on October 30, 2020. It will be updated weekly until December 30, 2021. The scale of the project is intended to reflect the scale of the crisis. On September 1, 2021, there were well over ten thousand quotes, statistics, and audio clips in the project database. On July 8th alone, the timeline includes over 100 statements made by prisoners afflicted with the virus or enduring anxiety, distress, and neglect. The monochrome, image-less, headline-styled interface, which allows viewers to step through thousands of prisoners’ statements, is designed to visualize their collective suffering, signal that the injustices they endure are structural, and demonstrate that the criminal punishment system in the US, itself, constitutes a public health crisis.