MISSISSIPPI 2004

Mississippi 2004
Installation with video and slide projection
By Ashley Hunt, 2005

In the summer of 2004, the summer leading up to a divisive presidential election, the Ashley Hunt was invited down to the Mississippi Delta to interview young people and community members about their experiences with the state’s “Training Schools” (boot camp-based prisons for youth), and then to present an edited version of those interviews as testimony for a public hearing before the state legislature as to the boot camps' abusive treatment of youth. The impact of this strategy was significant, and now the footage has been catalogued into a archive form video installation along with slides that evoke the surrounding political and economic landscape of the Southern U.S. today, as it catches up with sprawl, big box stores, SUVs and a massive decline local sufficiency.

click here for the webpage dedicated especially to this project.