JIll Magid (b.1973), Still from 'A Reasonable Man in a Box', 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York.
Jill Magid’s “A Reasonable Man in a Box” at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York focuses on the power of authority and the subjectivity of reason and looks to engage the social, political, and ethical definition of torture. A document declassified by President Obama in 2009, the “Bybee memo” caused immense public debate over the nature of torture. The document was signed by Jay Bybee, the Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, in 2002. The document contains parts of the Justice Department’s response to the CIA’s request to use torture methods in order to procure information from Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda operative. Magid takes the document and strategically arranges it upon the museum’s wall to reveal the holes in the US government’s logic.
The performative piece, displayed upon the opposite wall of the collage, is a video projection that looks like blank space. But within this white box, intended to place the audience in a similar emotionally vexed state as the prisoner held by US troops, the shadow of a giant scorpion comes into frame sending chills along the viewers skin. The poisonous insect struggles with an unseen anonymous partner who catches the scorpion in long tweezers as the insect squirms. Magid effectively takes the all too abstract word “torture” and makes it accessible to the viewer in a deeply emotional way.
The final piece of the installation is a handwritten text. It says, “What is a reasonable man in a box?” Upon having read the Bybee memo, Magid poses a single, simple question to combat the absurdity of the government’s argument. By her simple assertion, Magid looks to engage the US government in constructive dialogue instead of shouts of horror. The question may be quiet, but it is far from naive.
A Reasonable Man in a Box will be displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art until September 12, 2010.
