Monday January 20, 12-6pm
Inauguration: A National Special Security Listening Event
w/ Kamari Carter
Admission is Free
Microscope will be open from 12-6pm on Monday January 20 for a “Inauguration: A National Security Listening Event” with artist Kamari Carter. The event is the 2nd and final listening event taking place in connection with the artist’s current solo exhibition at the gallery “Vexillary,” which closes on January 25th.
Throughout the day, the audience is invited to sit, listen, and witness the live-feeds of Carter’s sound installation “The Patriot Act” — broadcast in real time through three megaphones, one red, one white, one blue – which expose the usually private, behind-the-scenes communications of the DC Metropolitan Police (MPD) from three districts around the Capitol’s grounds. This includes the area around the Capital One Arena, where viewers will be gathering to watch the Inauguration — which has been moved in doors — and at which Trump is scheduled to personally appear.
This is the first inauguration since the MPD agreed to implement new rules for mass arrests following lawsuits for their treatment of protestors they detained in connection with the 2017 Inauguration.
The installation responds to the expansion of government surveillance authority in the US and, more specifically, its effects on local police enforcement over the years since the adoption of the Patriot Act – or officially, the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act” — on October 26, 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, which were said to be temporary measures. In this case it is we, the public, who are listening and the police are being surveilled.
The work, among others, points to the biasses behind assessments of who is deemed a threat and in the resulting responses and action/inaction, drawing attention to the differences in the way the MPD prepared for and reacted to the Black Life Matters protests in Lafayette Square Park in the summer of 2020 — firing tear gas — versus their lack of readiness for the January 6th riots, despite having received threats of violence, and the fact that a map of the U.S. Capitol building’s tunnel system had been shared online in the days before the riots.
The audience may enter and exit at any time during the event. Please, keep in mind that as the listening feeds are live, there may be content that some may find disturbing.
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Kamari Carter (b. 1992) is a New York-based artist working primarily with installation, video, sound, and performance to investigate notions such as space, systems of identity, oppression, control, and surveillance. His work has been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence, RI; Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY; Wave Hill, New York; Fridman Gallery, New York; and Automata Arts, Los Angeles, among others, and has been featured in publications including Artnet, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, and Whitewall, among others. Carter received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, CA in 2017 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2019.