Development

In May of 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police officer, Derek Chauvin, along with three accompanying officers of the Minneapolis Police department. Footage of Floyd’s death prompted nationwide protests across the United States along with international movements of solidarity. Soon after, in reaction to these protests, members of various local police departments took a knee. News platforms promoted viral videos of the officers genuflecting: rehearsing humility, servility, and respect to their communities. It was Derek Chauvin who first took a knee that summer. Only months before, he had kneeled upon the neck of George Floyd for a recorded eight minutes and forty six seconds, resulting in Floyd’s death.

A feeling of disorientation took hold as I watched police repeat this gesture. The significance of their posture was emptied out and given a new meaning in light of Chauvin’s actions. In what context is “taking a knee” weaponized to take a life? What does it mean for a police officer to take a knee? In what ways, and to what extent do the uniforms—their profession—determine the meaning of their actions?

This series of drawings, Los Desastres del Estado, is a documentation of gestures and tactics habitual to police brutality. The officers depicted in this series derive from public access documentation found on the internet, whether dashcam, bodycam, or civilian cell phone footage. By pausing the footage, I was able to screenshot the frames which course the path of violence, i.e. the intervals between the raising of a boot to the moment of impact. I then traced the outlines of the figure from these frames and arranged them in sequence.

These motion studies are the foundation for the compositions of this project. From this catalog of violence, I selected officers, each from a distinct department and historical moment, and composited them together into new cooperative arrangements. The figures now coordinate in shared space, their synchronized actions delineated against a clear and calculated backdrop.

The sequential compositions trace the human body in motion as well as the body politic. They illustrate the mechanics of violence by the individual, by groups, and the patterns that propagate violence within the institution of state governance. Minneapolis officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao, enabled Derek Chauvin’s actions by standing guard around him. Their passive posture is, too, an important component in the systems of force. This stance is also indicative of the departments, police unions, and the courts at large, which ineffectually address this violence. Police criminal misconduct is often ignored or even defended, such as with qualified immunity law, which ensures that problematic officers are shifted out of one community and into another. While this index is not exhaustive, these drawings illustrate the frequency of certain actions, or the lack thereof in police use of force—a critical motif in the choreography of the state.