ASHES ASHES

Ashes Ashes
61 minutes, 2020
Directed and Produced by Ashley Hunt

ASHES ASHES is the first of Ashley Hunt’s trilogy on prison closures and abolition, followed by Double Time and And Water Brings Tomorrow a two-channel video imagining of an abolitionist future. With the scheduled closure of the Rikers Island Jail Complex as its starting point, the coastline of the upper East River as its imagery, and COVID-19 and the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising as its backdrop, the video pictures what might overtake Rikers carceral architecture after its

The video is narrated through interviews with multiple voices, including New York-based scholars, activists, artists and thinkers: 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Shana Agid
Dalaeja Foreman
Sophia Gurulé
Pilar Maschi 
… and other members of No New Jails NYC — an autonomous collective that worked to bring an abolitionist framework to the campaign to close Rikers Island jail complex.

The video is accompanied by a free digital newspaper, including an additional interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore about the carcerality of COVID-19 and “abolitionist consciousness,” and featuring image and campaign contributions from the RAPP Campaign (Release Aging People in Prison), Critical Resistance’s Abolitionist Platform Toward Healthy Communities Now and Beyond COVID-19, and the New York Transformative Justice Hub.