Guantanamo Bay Force Feeding

Due to individual and widespread hunger strikes throughout Guantanamo Bay, militants and officials had to resort to force feeding inmates. In 2005, the detainees organized several widespread hunger strikes to protest their innocence and the conditions that they were confined to - they then began again in 2013. In September 2005, The New York Times reported that as many as 200 prisoners had taken to hunger striking. During the new wave of hunger strikes in 2013, it was reported that 106 out of the 166 detainees were on a hunger strike with 45 of them being force fed.

Many argue that force feeding the prisoners is abusive, the UN Human Rights Commission said they regard the force feeding as a form of torture. If prisoners did not comply to counselling and being fed, officials would have to use force, strap them down into a chair and deliver their food through a pipe in their nostrils.

We created our piece to resemble a hearing taking place debating the force feeding of detainees, with Billy and I standing on chairs as those with authority and Kim, Ivory, Ethan and Kevaughn as prisoners and those against the force feeding. We placed a set of head phones between two, one ear piece going in one's collar and the other going in the other's - this was meant to represent not only the method of force feeding but also the filtering out of information by the US Government. The prisoners would then say a line of text taken from the article we used as stimulus whilst Billy and I pressed a buzzer sound to black out certain words they were saying. I really liked the approach we took as it wasn't too direct and simple but it still got straight to the point and portrayed the correct information and emotions that we felt was necessary for the article. By carrying out this exercise and developing this piece we were not only able to learn more about the subject but that we also made a piece that allows the audience to understand and discover a little more about the situation in an interesting and artistic way.