REMIXING As Feminist Protest

Channel TWo [CH2]: "barelyLegal_IN"

2016

Channel TWo [CH2]
barelyLegal_IN, 2016
HD video, 4 hours

barelyLegal_ is a series of data-driven desktop documentary “drives” tracing actual routes to obtain safe legal abortions for women in the United States. barelyLegal_ is data visualization or experiential data, in the spirit of very long form conceptual video art. Each piece plays the entire duration of a trek so that viewers can experience real barriers and real distance in real time. barelyLegal_ combines physical, social, and psychological landscape. The project is ongoing and was begun in January 2015, seven months before the anti-Planned Parenthood propaganda videos once again put abortion in the media spotlight. barelyLegal_IN tells the story of a person traveling from Decatur, IN to Indianapolis, IN, a two-hour trek each way.

In former Governor, now Vice President Mike Pence’s territory accessing safe, legal healthcare requires an adult woman to schedule a consultation where she receives state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion. She must then wait 18 hours. During her next appointment she must undergo an ultrasound, where the provider must offer her the option to view
the image. For a woman with part-time hourly wages/no paid time off, children or seniors at home to care for, or unreliable transportation, injustice is magnified.

Technically, the work uses GPS coordinate data, spaced approximately 6 to 8 miles apart. We wrote a series of programs to make this work. A Processing program imports the GPS points exported by Javascript code and grabs a series of images from Google’s Street View.