A Message Before Leaving was realized in collaboration with Jeffery Doughtie, a death row inmate of the maximum security prison in Huntsville, Texas; the assistance of Massimiliano Ferraina; and the support of Washington University and the association 'Hands Off Cain'. The project’s objective was to allow Doughtie, through performative strategies of intervention, to leave his messages around the urban landscapes of European and American cities. I aimed to reflect on the function of creativity, imagination and visual communication to disrupt orders of visibilities and render perceptible aspects of social life which are hidden, invisible, cancelled. The idea was to give to Jeffery Doughtie the imaginary possibility of writing on the walls of cities in Europe and USA. By documenting this impossible action as something that really happened, the work resulted in a contradictory dynamics that confused spectators and at the same time encouraged imaginary processes of redemption. To view the project click HERE.
In the same period I organized a series of urban actions to unveil the writings covered by stripes of paintings. The images below are documentations of one of these actions.
Most of the writings, we uncovered, were political.