CDOC Meal Walks — Molly Ott

Week 4. Friday, breakfast. (1137 calories)

Week 2. Friday, lunch. (712 calories)

Week 3. Friday, breakfast. (965 calories)

During traditional mealtimes, 8:30 am or noon, I eat from the menu that twenty one correctional facilities in Colorado depend on. I total the calories of the food and then walk from my home until all of the calories are used. Walking is my way to process my ideas of and relationships with the American Department of Corrections. Walking also activates my body’s deep knowledge: I am not entirely dependent on my intellect or emotions but have new access to intuitive, inherited, flexible, and ritualistic knowing.

In this space, I think about what a world without mass incarceration could be like.

Week 1. Sunday, breakfast. (1258 calories)

Week 4. Friday, lunch. (1245 calories)

Week 3. Wednesday, breakfast. (1137 calories)

Week 2. Wednesday, breakfast. (1249 calories)

Week 3. Monday, breakfast. (1032 calories)

For imagining a future without prison, for alternative infrastructure, I rely on my own food consumption to connect and invent with people I have never met. Eating relates my body to other bodies by our literal shared inhabitance of lipids, proteins, and nutrients. Spiritual linkage is implied, as my rituals have similar goals of Christian communion. This is my own magic, to mesh myself with those who are walking inside of chain linked fences topped with barbed wire, believing that we can communicate our knowledge and power, together, without words, when in this digestive state.

Week 1. Tuesday, lunch. (1030 calories)

Week 4. Sunday, breakfast. (1149 calories)

Week 1. Wednesday, breakfast. (1067 calories)

Week 1. Tuesday, breakfast. (987 calories)

Week 3. Sunday, breakfast. (1138 calories)

Week 1. Wednesday, breakfast. (1012 calories)

Week 2. Wednesday, lunch. (1060 calories)

White napkins embroidered with the word “I” are used to record the residue of the meal and then are carried during the walk. This repeated “I” considers the body as a container for the ego – holder of historic evidence – and emphasizes the inherent repetition of penal processes. When the walk ends, I turn the napkin into a flag to mark my final steps.