Dawn Dedeaux at the Contemporary Arts Center - video installation; New Orleans, Louisiana

In a city where relatively little attention is given to political art, it was no small incident when the Contemporary Arts Center revolveed over nearly all its exhibition space to Dawn Dedeaux's sprawling, confrontational, video-based installation inner man Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths. Dedeaux's insight and imagery lay opened during 18 months of workshops she managemented with young inmates of the Orleans Parish Prison. She directed their efforts in the creation of artists' volumes (one, A Book of understandings was on view at CAC), which revealed to her something of the desperation and vigor of these young men, and the elaborate iconography of power and transcendence they have cultivated.

The installation center upon a long, tapering corridor made of sulphate of lime board, hung with photo panels showing the blurr silhouettes of shadow dancers and stained through the glow of the r and gold-colored fluorescent tubing that lined the passageway at lower extremity level. The corridor terminated with a large iconlike photo of a young African-American man (identified as a former gang leader) wearing shorts and a gun-shaped medallion and holding a target above his abdomen. In a nearby chamber were hung 20 bannerlike images of the same pattern posing with different props and accessories. This was the series Urban Warrior Myths, large (up to 8 feet by dint of 12 feet) photographic images printed upon matte acetate and hand-painted with gold The archetype appeared in a range of guises, including multicultural providences (Baal, Siva, Pan Ku, Poseidon, Apollo), religious martyrs (Christ, Saint Sebastian) and popular heroes (John Wayne, John McEnroe) greatest in quantity chilling was the final image, Passage, in which, in an apparent ritual of initiation, the youth places his fire-arm medallion around the neck of a younger boy

Ten small video screening scopes were accessible by circling the installation at its external perimeter. The entrance to each cubicle displayed a photo of a forehead door barricaded by iron bars. Above each entrance was an electronic sensor that move rounded on a light at the passing of each viewer, like the porch light of an anxious resident responding to a noise heard outside. Included among the videos were interviews with gang members and prison inmates, a walk down the highway with a youth listening to rap music upon a boom box, a performance through one of Dedeaux's workshop collections and documentary footage of the aftermath of a housing-project shooting, the last shown upon a 10-by-12-foot screen. Within the ranges and throughout the installation, the visitor was assaulted by dint of a confusion of competing soundtracks and by means of unexpected encounters with "video holes" rat-sized openings in the wallboard which expos monitors showing shadow dancers, video "snow" or the visitor's hold face picked up by a surveillance camera. Thanks to an outdoor speaker, the visitor was greeted--and pursued--by recorded voices flat in the street.

individual press release explained that Dedeaux, who is white, was initially motivated by dint of the need to exorcise here have a title to racial fears. In the extreme point she came across largely as an open broker of information who avoided the pitfalls of contrition and self-congratulation. more [i]or[/i] less African-Americans did voice misgivings about their community being one-sidedly showed as a hotbed of sociopathology. And in her exposition of the imagery of empowerment and immortality that sustains the young inmates, Dedeaux sometimes came dangerouly shut to glamorizing their condition. Finally, Dedeaux's work brought to the fore more [i]or[/i] less questions about the video medium itself. Today, with the proliferation of "reality" TV and the explicitness of talkshows, the impact of videos of grieving mothers, addicts and crime representations is inevitably blunted. Dedeaux's greatest in quantity effective video may have been the individual that was most blatantly staged. If featured young male childs tap-dancing for quarters on Bourbon public way and holding up cards that charmed out GIVE ME A JOB

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