Reflections on Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with Krystof Wodiczko by Patricia C. Phillips

Wodicko, through his artistic lens, relates the Democratic process to a traumatic process. Wodicko describes an event or trauma as taking place, and having an inextinguishable flame. A sort of resonance, which shapes the individual from the moment in which the trauma is experienced, onward to the extent that the individual will never fully recover from a traumatic experience. Neurologically, the individual will remain attached to the event. Wodiczko then details what must come after a trauma,  to ensue the process of recovery. The very fist stage of recovery, which can simply be referred to as realization, details that the individual must look back and acknowledge the event that took place. And only after one is willing to confront the reality of the situation, can one truly move forward. However, the process of recovery is very much undefined, and can take up to a lifetime to resolve. Wodicko believes that one can only come to resolve trauma by directly engaging with it and intimacy is a key step along the process of recovery. Intimacy being, one's way of relating to the trauma directly, whether through dialogue or temporal experience.

Wodicko's work works to empower the individual, elevate them from their previous, enclosed state, into an open state, where the individual can grow and express their tragedy through new froms. Wodicko uses architecture as a medium for interaction and as a means of embodying the human spirit. Through live video projection, Wodicko digitally imprints the face of people onto building facades. These buildings, each tied to a specific spatial experience, direct the user, the user being people of trauma related experience,  to use his art in a positive and beneficial way. The specific installation Border Projection: Part 2, Tijuana, 1988 speaks to immigrants, mainly people, who are emotionally attached to the border through some instance of trauma. The installation allows people to project a close up image of their own face, focused on the mouth, onto the face of a border control office, located on site, where immigrants cross the border. Through Wodick's method of video projection, the people using the art are able to inhabit the architecture, the architecture which previously held them down, in a silent state. The use of architecture as a tool for initiating dialogue works by elevating the user to higher platform, where they form the confidence to "speak out loud." The use of a social setting as the site for the installation integrates other people into the mix, people of similar origins who can visually register with the  users new face, and voice that is being projected on what once was a border control office. Bystanders, can, just from observing, gain the confidence they need to begin to speak out loud about their internal struggles. These struggles, however, initiated by the trauma of crossing the border, go far beyond the individuals direct experience of crossing the border, and begin to reflect a transitional change that is felt by an entire community of people, immigrants. Wodicko's reference to democracy is subtle, but pungent, he's essentially, re-evaluating democracy through the eye's of immigrants, people who must fight to stay alive in a new seemingly un-democratic world.

The psychological component to Wodicko's work allows people to grow, and overcome prior anxieties attached to the location, time and space of the moment of trauma. Wodicko's work truly empowers the user, and strives to redefine their spacial temporal registration of the geography in which the trauma was originally experienced in. And once gaining confidence with the initial geographic setting in which the trauma was induced, one can then begin to further investigate other aspects of the trauma which are not as readily available as the direct stimulatory experience of the events locality.

Wodicko sculpts the users experience in order to elevate the user themselves to face the trauma directly. Or in other words, instills the confidence that is clearly not provided by the new, democratic state directly.