oliver musovik

Sometime ago it was usual to punish prisoners with hard physical work, for example, with work in a stone-pit or on building roads, and in the same time their movement was restricted by attaching heavy chains and weights to the ankles of the prisoners. With time, heavy work was being use less and less as a punishment method. Today, prisoners still work in prison, but their work is more technical than manual. In Germany a prison has successfully launched a fashion line, completely manufactured by the prisoners, which sales very well on the net.
As the prisoners nowadays have more free time, they spend it in various activities like reading, long distance learning, writing letters, and as their work is no longer that much physically demanding, the prisoners spend part of their free time in sport activities like basketball, and especially weightlifting.
It seems to me ironic that prisoners were once punished with weights and today, well behaving prisoners are being rewarded with the right to use the gym – where they lift weights!?
In the USA for some time there is a fierce public discussion about the benefit of weightlifting in prison. Some states have prohibited weightlifting in the prisons altogether, the public opinion is that the prisoners should not get privileges and that the weights could be used as weapon, also that the prisoners come out from the prison stronger, and thus more dangerous. On the opposite side, others think that the weightlifting keeps the prisoners busy and channels their energy into non-violent activities that build up prisoners’ self-esteem.
This double nature of the weights (punishment or reward, weapon or sport) in the prison context, I tried to merge into something that resembles sculptural form. These objects are then confronted to authentic prisoners’ pen-pall letters and poems, which reveal their softer side.