This is an effort to ask better questions about the information that communities produce and amass to establish collective memory about the prison industry in the United States. The objects on view are artifacts of my own efforts to understand, and they follow a trail where a personal responsibility to “feel” is headed. Here, you are welcomed to join in the fumbling experience of learning, which complicates emotions, instinctive feelings, and an intellectual state. This is not a resolved project.

This soil was collected from outside of Colorado Correctional Facilities

Put on the available gloves

Select a blacked out image

Apply a small amount of muscle rub to its surface

Using a cloth, rub the muscle rub over the photograph until the image below is revealed

If a cloth has become too dirty, dispose of it in the bin below the table

Gloves can be thrown away

You may take the photograph with you

Journal entries from my first semester teaching inside Coloradan adult prisons