CORRECTIONS: the abolitionist's ledger

Understanding the complexities of scale is a challenge for most individuals. We hear large numbers and discover it difficult to imagine how that quantity appears.

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the abolitionist's ledgertakes that challenge to make visible that which is essential knowledge but easy to overlook. On each of 1500 pages of large ledger-sized paper are 1500 orange outlined cells. Within each cell, I have marked a graphite stroke that occupies that cell.

 

The total number of individual strokes is 2,300,000, one for each of those imprisoned in the USA. At the bottom of each page is a direction to the viewer: "Gently erase each cell. Complete as many as you are able. Collect your erasure residue and please locate in the container sitting on the desk."

 

Throughout the ledger are orange index pages that contain data indicating where— in that section of this accounting—they have reached the number of occupied cells that represent a data point on mass imprisonment.

 

The bench seat, carved with the word, record, is a homograph; two or more words that are spelled the same but have different meanings when pronounced differently.