A Public Reading: Combatant Status Review Tribunals pp. 002954 – 003064

For Immediate Release

Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064
A public reading
A part of 9 Scripts from a Nation at War
OSU Thompson Library, West Reading Room
Friday, March 5, 2010, 4 - 8 p.m.

The conference, Human Rights: Confronting Images and Testimonies, at the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Thompson Library on March 4 and 5, presents “Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064,” a four-hour public reading of fifteen tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, between July 2004 and March 2005. Featured are approximately 110 pages of tribunal transcripts, a small fraction of the material generated by 558 tribunals. This performance is part of the artwork “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” by David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, and Andrea Geyer.

After the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that prisoners held at Guantánamo had certain minimal rights, the Department of Defense set up The Combatant Status Review Tribunals, or CSRTs, to provide the appearance of a Habeas Corpus procedure while, in accordance with Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, allowing detainees to contest their status as “enemy combatants.” During each tribunal, the U.S. government presents unclassified accusations against the detainee, and the accused is then permitted to rebut these specific charges. The detainee is given personal representation but not legitimate legal counsel; he is not allowed to see, or therefore rebut, classified information, and since the bulk of the evidence that provides the basis for “enemy combatant” designation is usually classified, prisoners are effectively kept from making their cases.

The sheer volume of transcripts released on the Internet by the Department of Defense has effectively obscured them from public view. “Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064” stages an excerpt of these proceedings as a gesture of making these tribunals public, with all their fabrications, inconsistencies, and contradictions.

“Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064” was originally performed on March 11th, 2007 at Judson Memorial Church in New York presented in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at the New School, New York.

The reading at OSU is part of the conference: Human Rights: Confronting Images and Testimonies, at the Wexner Center for the Arts on March 4 and 5. The reading will take approximately 4 hours including breaks. Readers in Columbus are Shelia Bock, Patty Cunningham II, Joel Diaz, Joseph Ferguson, Katie Gonzalez, Elaine Householder, Theresa Lee, Lucy Ramos, Cormac Slevin, Danielle Terrance, and Liza Toher.

“9 Scripts from a Nation at War” is a collaborative project developed over the past three years by David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, and Andrea Geyer.
Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes and Andrea Geyer will be at OSU to participate in the conference and will be present for the reading and the discussion that will follow.

Featuring multiple media, “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” responds to the new questions and changed conditions that have arisen since March 2003. The project considers the processes by which we become, are placed into and/or refuse to be certain kinds of “individuals”—artists, soldiers, students, journalists, prisoners, detainees, citizens, Iraqis, Europeans, Americans, and so on.

The reading is organized by the OSU Department of English and Department of Art Living Culture Initiative, with the Wexner Center for the Arts and realized with the support of The OSU College of Arts and Humanities, The Multicultural Center Collaborative Programming Grant, The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, The Institute for Women, Gender, and Public Policy, The Mershon Center for Public Policy, Project Narrative, Rhetorical Visions Fund, Center for Folklore Studies, The Department of Women’s Studies, Women in Development, Disability Studies, Melton Center for Jewish Studies, Sexuality Studies, and the Folklore Students Association


If you have questions concerning access, wish to request a sign language interpreter or other accommodations for a disability please contact Amy Shuman at Shuman.1@osu.edu. Early requests are encouraged; a week will generally allow us to provide seamless service .