I Met Richard Kamler at a party. Most of the party-goer

became part of this large contingent. Mimi Farina was part of it out there, Bread and Roses. So there was all this resonance happening out there based on this piece of art. I had grandmothers on the table. 
 
RW:   What do you mean? They were there to listen?
 
RK:   No. They were part of the project. One woman, (Jean O'Hara) became a public figure. Her son and his girlfriend were killed. She had to go through some changes and she eventually became on of the first volunteers in the victim/offender reconciliation program, which was based on my Table of Voices project. She went into jails and talked to prisoners about her experiences so they could see what they had done. You have to see it. 
 
RW:  Have you been present at any of these moments where the victim's mother is there?
 
RK:   No. It would be made nearly impossible for me to be part of that, without any connection to prison institutions except that I'm making art about it. But I could go when she was talking to twenty guys in a room about her experiences. What's so moving is that they see that somebody who has been impacted is now coming to talk with them.
     I mean, most of these guys, unless they're crazy, they've just made bad decisions. They lost their mind, lost their tempers, did something stupid. And now somebody is making that effort of coming to them.
    It's not easy even to get into a prison as a visitor. You have to go through all this stuff, wear the right pants, go through metal detectors. It takes a long time. When I taught there, sometimes I could hardly get out. It's an area where a door shuts in back of you, so you're in a room like this and a door hasn't opened up on the other side, a sally-port. So they keep you in there to make sure you're not taking somebody out under your arm, alright? So here are these people making that effort. 
 
RW:  This is all very intense. Last night I was telling my wife a little about your work and just talking about it, tears would come to my eyes.
 
RK:  I know. When I was intimately involved in Table of Voices my house was in enormous turmoil because many times, the victim's families would call me on the phone and accuse me of re-traumatizing them.
     And Joya is a mother. One thing she said to me that still resonates in my mind was, "If anything happens to our son, it's going to be your fault." Because I was opening up this huge can of worms! 
     And I was accused of being less than candid many times. Looking back on it, I really wanted to do this piece, the Table of Voices. I really knew it could be an important piece in terms of transformation. And maybe I was not 100% candid with some of the victims I spoke to. I'm not sure I could do that again. The Last Meals and the Last Statements, that was part of The Waiting Room - which was in Texas [big sigh] - we're going to need a break after these conversations. [after a pause we continue]
     The last statements were very profound because they actually also reflected religion. "God will forgive me." "I'm going home to heaven - or to hell." Sometime they'd be lengthy statements.
     I think I might have sent you a couple of drawings. I have all their last statements downstairs, maybe 217 last statements - what they actually said, and their last meal. Many people decline the last meal. I think I sent you one tray that just said, "Declined." There was nothing on it, an empty tray. 
      When I did The Waiting Room in 1999, that's when I really focused on the importance of the venue. When I decided I wanted to do a piece based on the visiting room - where I'd visit my friend in San Quentin - I wondered, where should I build this piece? Should I do it here in the Bay Area? It easier here. I have all the resources here. But then I decided to do it in Huntsville, Texas, which is the capital of state-sanctioned murder. The people of the state of Texas vs John Alvarez. Okay, the state is killing that guy. 
     Then it took me a year to figure out how to do it there. Where can I do it? Who is supporting me there? Is there a community there I can talk to? I eventually began to meet people down there. I got in involved with the Texas Moratorium Project, which is a project to try to put a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas. 
     I'm really obsessive [laughs]. I'm really focused and, when I decide I'm going to do a project, then I figure out a way to do it. I don't really listen to "no" too often. Which is a mixed blessing, I should say.  
   So I found all these people who could help me and eventually ended up building The Waiting Room. I couldn't build it in the prison so it was in the Sam Houston Memorial Museum.
 
RW:  So you did find a venue for it.
 
RK:  Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was committed to do it in Texas. In fact I had community conversations there, too, which were very, very provocative. The victim's right group came to the first community conversation when an abolitionist was speaking. There were about five in the front row and they began to rustle papers and eventually made a huge fuss and all walked out together.
    The piece traveled around the state. When it left Huntsville, it went up to Fort Worth/Arlington. There was a victim's rights group there that tried to shut the show down, too. 
 
RW: Have you talked with some of the victim's rights people?
 
RK:  Yes. 
 
RW:  How has that gone?
 
RK:  There's a group out here in the Bay Area called Citizens Against Homicide. I've been on their mailing list for ages. I used to speak with them all of the time and they were very distrustful of me. They said, "We know your agenda."
     In their newsletter they wrote about me saying this guy has spent his entire life trying to abolish the death penalty. We have to be careful with him. One of them, who I had a relationship with, her daughter was killed as a student up at Chico State. She could relate to me as a decent human being and I had enormous compassion for her. But when she wrote about me she said, "Don't trust him."
     There was one woman who - we almost got in to an argument about it, and I backed off. She's got the pain. She thought, "We have to kill this guy."
   
RW:  You mean the murderer.
 
RK:  Yes. 
 
RW:  Biblical, an eye for an eye. 
 
RK:  All of this stuff is. And what happens is that the state intervenes and tries to rationalize it in some way.
     If the state is going to be involved in it, there needs to be much more of a healing way than just a punitive way. I don't think anyone who kills someone should not be held accountable. You know what I mean? I'm not that stupid. If someone kills somebody, they need to be accountable! 
     What I'm saying is that when you stick somebody in a four-foot three by ten-foot cell for forty years nothing happens but a huge expense. I mean, I've had dinner with people who have been in prison for twenty years, okay? And even if I didn't know that person had been in prison, I would know they had been in some really dark place just watching how they eat. They're hunched over and constantly looking around. When I see that I know, "Oh, that person's been in prison."
    Just a year or two ago there was a show that I was part of here in the city, a dual show about prisons with Intersection for the Arts and SF State. There was a guy there who I had dinner with one night who had been in isolation for 22 years in Angola down in Louisiana. Twenty-two years! I didn't believe it! You know what I'm saying?
 
RW:  Yes. It's impossible to imagine that. What was he like?
 
RK:  Totally, totally, totally still. When I spoke to him, he would let the words go inside. I knew what he was doing, but if you didn't know him, you'd repeat the same words because you'd think he hadn't heard you. But no, he was used to just looking and studying.
     He would look at you and then he would say, "Well [pause] I'm thinking [pause] that maybe [pause] this [pause] should be [pause] in a different [pause] direction. He talked like that. So you just knew.
 
RW:  Did you ask him how he survived all those years in solitary? 
 
RK:  Did you ever hear of Jarvis Masters? 
 
RW:  No, I haven't.
 
RK:  He's a Buddhist here on death row in San Quentin. He wrote two books, the second one we just went to a book opening at Lit Quake last year, That Bird Has My Wings. Jarvis has been in isolation for over twenty years, also. How he survived was he learned how to meditate. He became a Buddhist, okay?
     The person who taught him that was another friend of mine who is a private investigator. She works on death penalty cases and is a Buddhist herself. She would go in and talk with Jarvis. She'd say, why don't you try this. It took him six or seven years. So he meditated.
     I think he might be getting off death row. But he's terrified to get off death row because he's not used to being around people. And another reason is, when you walk around the main line if you happen to just bump into someone, it could be cause for a fight. This other friend of mine, Guy, who I mentioned earlier, he's set up a life for himself in there. 
 
RW:  In prison?
 
RK:   Yes. He has a very active correspondence, a very active phone life. And he's been out on the street a total of maybe five years in his adult life. Maybe not even that much. He's been on death row for, I don't know, 25 years.
     When I did The Waiting Room down in Texas all of that was bubbling all the time, and what does this mean? And what are these last suppers you would get? So I would try to bring the details, like what did people order? - turkey, eggs, onion rings, pie, pizza.
     There's a guy who became the head of a program for the legal services for women prisoners with children. He was convicted under the felony murder provision; even if you didn't pull the gun, you're guilty. He did twelve years for that, but he's out now. 
 
RW:  So he's now the head of this legal services thing?
 
RK:  Right. Legal services for women prisoners. There's this whole community that I was very engaged with at a certain point. And reflecting on that now, it's like, "Wow, this was really an example of people who had really transformed their lives!"
     When your life gets transformed in prison, it's still pretty constrained. But when you come out, like Michael Marcum, who is assistant sheriff of San Francisco - it's unbelievable! And the man, Dorsey Nun, who runs a program for the legal services for women prisoners - all of that is what I wanted to include, if possible, in these art pieces. 
    So to get back to what I said earlier, that's what I mean by being engaged. How can all of that be used some way, for healing, for transformation? That's what I see as a direction for art, for the kind of art I want to practice.