Vitalis Im

VITALIS IM, then a graduate student at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, was awarded a grant in April 2021 to aid research on “Sounds from Within: An Ethnography of Musical Practice in Michigan Prisons,” supervised by Dr. Damani Partridge. The major intervention of this research is to demonstrate how the arts — broadly defined as visual art, creative writing, improvisatory theater, and musicmaking practices — in prison are inextricably tied to experiences of violence. This dissertation explores the violences that people in prison encounter and how artmaking practices mediate these experiences in two ways: first, as testimony through practices of witnessing that seek to countermand the obfuscation of violence in prisons; second, as a relational practice that facilitates new possibilities of engagement with the prison environment to both constructive and destructive ends, as a practice that facilitates both profound experiences of communitas and suffering.