The Knotted Line is an interactive, online art project that looks at the historical relationships between incarceration, education and labor in the United States from 1495-2025. It combines over 75 miniature paintings of historical moments housed inside an online tactile laboratory.

The Knotted Line paints a history of the United States and the way that freedom has always been defined in relationship to a lack of freedom.  Just as importantly, The Knotted Line imagines a new world through the work of alternative education, labor and justice practices.

With the completion of the online project, The Knotted Line will also lead to middle, high school and college curriculum guides and an accordion book supplement available for purchase.

The Knotted Line is a unique project that is both a new media art project and educational tool for the digital generation.  It gives needed context to the contemporary prison system and creates a collaborative document of the current experiences with the prison system through its interactivity. 

The Knotted Line is a natural development from Evan Bissell’s project, What Cannot Be Taken Away.  The project was an 8 month collaborative dialogue between incarcerated fathers and youth with incarcerated parents.  During that project, the group and Evan created a timeline of the history of incarceration to which they added their personal experiences.  This spurred the creation of The Knotted Line.

Where your support goes:

1. Creation of the 75 miniature paintings

2. Creation of the online interface for the paintings and archive of research and photos.

3. Impact and Accessibility: Outreach, Creation of the Curriculum Guide and Accordion Book Supplement

Collaborators:

Project Director/Painting: Evan Bissell’s work is a project-based practice of creating structures of collaborative dialogue and expressions of personal and community truths. Working with groups of people, Bissell facilitates educational, auto-ethnographic and contemplative processes of interviews, research, listening, writing and art-making.  Resulting from these processes are collaboratively designed, larger-than-life portraits, multi-media participatory exhibitions and public installations.  Project themes have ranged from the impact of incarceration on families to imagination as a practice of transformation for youth.  Through projects, Bissell has produced over 50 portraits, dozens of free workshops, audio-documentation, celebrations, original give-away timelines, maps and resource guides.

Bissell has had solo exhibitions at Intersection for the Arts and SOMArts Cultural Center, created a hybrid set/installation for the premiere of Chinaka Hodge’s play Mirrors in Every Corner as well as participating in shows at Southern Exposure and Guerrero Gallery. He is a two-time recipient of the Individual Artist Commission award through the city of San Francisco’s Cultural Equity Grants program, and has received funding from Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure program, Puffin Foundation, LEF and the California Arts Council, among others.  He is a 2010 Eureka Fellowship Nominee.  He has taught art and led public projects in schools (k-12) throughout the Bay Area.  Currently Bissell co-teaches Teen Alive, a class at El Cerrito High School, for young men dealing with anger and violence.

Bissell is a 2005 graduate of Wesleyan University with a double major in Painting and American Studies with an Ethnic Studies concentration.

Web Design: Erik Loyer is a media artist who uses tactile and performative interfaces to tell stories with interactive media. His work has been exhibited online and internationally at venues including Artport at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Digital Gallery at MOCA Los Angeles; the Prix Ars Electronica; Transmediale; and IndieCade. Loyer's award-winning website The Lair of the Marrow Monkey was one of the first to be added to the permanent collection of a major art museum, at SFMOMA. As Creative Director for the experimental digital humanities journal Vectors, he has designed over a dozen interactive essays in collaboration with numerous scholars including the Webby-honored documentary Public Secrets. Loyer is the founder of interactive design studio Song New Creative, and develops story-driven interactive entertainment under the Opertoon label, including most recently a critically-acclaimed iPhone application entitled Ruben & Lullaby. A recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship, Loyer has a B.A. in Cinema/Television Production from the University of Southern California.

Researcher/Outreach Director: Josh Begley is a media strategist and online organizer at the Citizen Engagement Laboratory. He holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently enrolled in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.