Patricia Hearst Proposal #1

NATHANIEL PHILLIPS • INTRODUCTION & PROPOSAL PAGE 1

In 2001, Patricia Hearst was finally granted a pardon by President Bill Clinton. Up until that point, however, much controversy surrounded her case, and her claim that she was brainwashed by her captors, the SLA.

As soon as she was found and taken in by the police — some 18 months after her initial kidnapping — outrageous accusations were made. She could’ve escaped several times, so why didn’t she? Did she befriend, and maybe even fall in love with her kidnappers, who tortured and abused her?

The more people talked and speculated, the less sympathy they had for Patricia. Her image was twisted and distorted by the media and the public alike until she was viewed as a criminal, rather than a victim. I want to visually represent this distortion. I have taken images of Patricia Hearst during her kidnapping, and filtered them through several channels — screencaps of enlarged images from shoddy surveillance footage, photographed directly from a television screen — in order to construct patterns that, prior to closer inspection, seem abstract and relatively harmless. At first glance, they have very little to do with Patty Hearst — just as her own case had very little to do with her, by the end of it.

I have not yet decided on the final application of these patterns. They may become a screenprint, a zine, or possibly even a motion graphic.

NATHANIEL PHILLIPS • VISUAL RESEARCH PAGE 2

NATHANIEL PHILLIPS • DESIGN DEVELOPMENT PAGE 3










Throughout her 18 months of captivity, the SLA released several (presumably scripted)recordings of Patricia Hearst to the media. I traced the sound levels from these tapes to generate graphics, which can then be incorporated into the patterns.





Documents

Patricia Hearst Proposal #1