‘You are so missed’: voicemails remember people of color killed by law enforcement Art

‘Oh, Oscar. You are so missed, ”she began, her voice laden with sadness. “My heart still hurts for you. I think of you every day. And not a day goes by without you being in my mind. “She regrets: ‘Tomorrow, in five minutes, it’s your 35th birthday, and I miss you so much. I still have to get up now and turn off my light, because you are not here to turn off my light for me anymore. Your life has been cut far too short. And I really love you, love, love, love and miss you. My baby boy. Until we meet again. I love your mother. Always. ”

Her son, Oscar Grant III, was killed on New Year’s Day 2009 by Bart police in Oakland, California, and his death was captured on camera by witnesses. He was only 22. But on 1800HappyBirthday.com, the people in his community are celebrating a milestone, his 35th birthday.

1800 Happy Birthday is an art installation that focuses on celebrating the birthdays of black and brown men and women killed by law enforcement through birthday votes. Voluntary management and community are supported, the project focuses on the downfall of the story of the cases, less on death and more on life.

Visitors to the site are confronted with a large list of names, some familiar, others not. The names are written in a Gothic font, with their sunrise and sunset dates in running script. For various names awaits a play button with festive voicemails, filled with wishes of people who dialed in via a hotline. Animated by community interaction and embraced by community memory, it is reminiscent of a street monument, such as a mural or a bouquet of roses placed on a concrete path between lit candles and stuffed animals.

Film producer and co-founder of production studios EVEN / ODD, Mohammad Gorjestani, saw the series as a way to explore the intimate pain of such a loss. The loved ones and families of Philando Castile, Mario Woods and Oscar Grant III were on the birthdays of the deceased. “What always frustrated me in the news and media was that they would always concentrate on these tragedies in a way that really only focused on the immediate impact on the families, the sadness, the anger,” he said. ‘And then they move on to the next heading. I felt it was dehumanizing, because to consider people like Oscar Grant and George Floyd as martyrs for a movement is dehumanizing. I was keen to make something that looked at the calmer sadness and the more humanistic side of people. ”

With Covid-19 hindering him as a filmmaker, Gorjestani reflected on ways to bring the series to life and came up with the idea of ​​birthday temps. “Voice messages and birthdays are something that has a certain nostalgia for us. Everyone remembers receiving a call for their birthdays in the voicemail. There is something extremely human about it, “he said. With the approval of the Mario Woods family, the project was launched on July 22 on the day San Francisco was named Mario Woods Day. He adds: ‘Everyone can talk about a birthday. Everyone can tell that people are calling you on a birthday. It’s like food. It is a universal language. ”

The murder of black and colored people by law enforcement is a sensitive topic that is often insensitively discussed. Therefore, 1800 Happy Birthday is deliberately more challenging than challenging. The project seeks to close the gap between humanity and the legacy of the cases and the media coverage surrounding their deaths. ‘I do not really think of this project as sad, because I think it’s an evolution of sadness, it’s celebrating, remembering, basically honoring people. To remember them. If you listen to these voicemails, it is very loving. They remember someone for the person they were, as opposed to the heading they were. “I think it is important that we transcend if we only look at these tragedies as mere failures of the criminal justice system,” Gorjestani said.

Through the website, the victims are preserved in the memory of the public, in the seizing voicemails created by their family, friends and community. ‘What I think is only powerful about sound, there’s a certain command I noticed that people [engage with] “You can not help but listen,” Gorjestani said. ‘It’s also first person’s sound. It is not talking about someone in the third person. It speaks directly to someone. As a listener, you remember that these individuals were someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s sister, someone’s next of kin, as opposed to a name in the public realm. ”

Indeed, there is so much more to someone’s life than their death. There was so much more to Oscar Grant III. When asked about her son, Rev. Johnson does not begin with Oscar’s murder, but rather his love of athletics, his intelligence, his excitement for life, his mind, and his leadership skills. “Oscar was a young man who loved to play sports,” she said. “He played baseball, basketball, football. He loved being a leader in his own right. I remember he was in a baseball team one year. We had him enrolled so that they finally put him in the team with some younger kids. Every time he got up, he made a home run. Those kids looked up to him in that season of baseball. ‘

She shared his interests and aspirations and liked to share anecdotes about her son. “As a young man, he liked to pray in church in front of the whole congregation,” she said. “He wants to sing in the choir in the church and you can hear that he is the loudest singer there. I would like ‘Boy! Shush, not so hard! ‘and he will be louder! He was just that kind of young man who always radiated in front of a crowd. “She added, ‘Oscar was a father. He was a boy. He was a brother. He was an uncle. He was a cousin and a great cousin. He aspired to become a barber. ”

Grant’s short life raises the question of a life not lived by violent means, of dreams, aspirations that have not been fulfilled. Rev. Johnson now runs a foundation called Grant, where they organize athletics programs and help the community as she believes he would have done – if he had the chance to live his life. Even before the series, she presented community events on her birthday as a way to heal and help heal. Through 1800 Happy Birthday, she can hold a place for her son, even without the community celebration.

“This project sheds a different light,” she said. “It humanizes Oscar. It gives you the opportunity to really get to know who Oscar is and it also gives you the opportunity to share what you thought of Oscar. It definitely brought joy to my eyes all week. People call in, wish him a happy birthday, sing to him … It lets me know that Oscar, no matter how long it is, will always be a part of me and he will always be with me. He may not be physically here, but he’s still in my heart and he’s in other hearts where they can share the thing. ”

Gorjestani hopes to bring more life to 1800 in a similar way in 1800, as Johnson did with the Oscar Grant Foundation. At the moment, the plans to expand the project to a book or a physical installation for travel arts are, in my opinion, dependent on funds and of course Covid-19. Nevertheless, Rev Johnson says the existence of the project and community participation is encouraging for her.

“Oscar was a people person,” she said. ‘We are celebrating the last day we had as a celebration. He loved birthday celebrations. It is this love of birthdays that makes this particular celebration of life so relevant to his legacy. “Oscar always liked to celebrate,” she said, “he loved birthdays. He loved gifts. He was just that kind of young man … Happy birthday again gives me a feeling of joy and happiness that Oscar was a young man, that people cared for him. He was a young man who had aspirations and goals. He was a young man who would be successful in this society if given the opportunity. ‘