Trevor Paglen

Listening to Pelican Bay

Built in 1989, the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State prison is a prison-within-a-prison reserved for what the California Department of Corrections calls “the worst of the worst.” SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, six-by-ten-foot cells, twenty-three and a half hours a day, for years at a time. People held under these conditions develop what is known as “SHU Syndrome”—the degradation of mental faculties caused by extreme isolation. Conditions in the SHU are routine targets of international human rights campaigns.

Listening to Pelican Bay is an experimental lecture about the soundscape inside the Security Housing Unit, which is remarkable for its relative silence. Moving between metaphorical and literal definitions of silence, the lecture navigates through a series of audio recordings, video clips, periods of speaking, and periods of silence in order to illustrate the role that the silence of the SHU plays in the larger structures of domination which characterize the modern state.

Performance History:

September 2003
Artists' Television Access
San Francisco, CA

July 2003
Contemporary Arts Workshop
North Adams, MA

June 2003
16 Beaver Space
New York, NY

May 2003
C-Level Space
hosted by: Nomads and Residents_LA, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, and Art in Action
Los Angeles, CA

March 2003
Version 3 Festival
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Chicago, IL

March 2003
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL

March 2003
American Association of Geographers Conference
New Orleans, LA

February 2003
College Art Association Conference
New York, NY