DIGEST is a collaboration by sculptor Mia Pearlman, jazz pianist and composer Albert Marquès, and Keith LaMar, a writer, poet, and activist who has spent almost 30 years in solitary confinement on death row in Ohio for a crime he did not commit. It was on view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan from March - July 2023.

This interactive, monumental sculpture grew out of Keith’s metaphor for the prison industrial complex as a digestive system designed to consume and break people down. In fact, DIGEST is larger than the cell where Keith has been trapped for three decades. 

The sculpture evokes a brick building crushing its contents and itself in the process. Faceted with metal wire mesh, zip tie handcuffs, prison blankets, and prison uniforms from the Ohio State Penitentiary, DIGEST acts as a musical instrument played by the motion of viewers’ bodies: as visitors move around the work, they trigger videos of Keith performing original poetry about his personal evolution over three decades in solitary confinement and audio of Albert’s piano composition in 5 separate tracks. 

This exhibition also contains three videos from the album FREEDOM FIRST, the first album in history by an artist on death row..

Keith and Albert created the FREEDOM FIRST concert series in 2020, in which Keith performs live with Albert and a rotating group of international musicians to packed crowds around the world, from Joe’s Pub and the Jazz Gallery in New York, to the Iridia Festival in Barcelona, the 8th World Congress Against Death Penalty in Berlin (where they received an award), Madrid, and Santiago (Chile).  The project and album have been featured in The New York Times, WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, and major TV, newspaper and radio outlets in Spain and France.

DIGEST was born from a deep and personal friendship. Together with activists from the Justice For Keith LaMar organization, we continue to help create opportunities for Keith to tell his own story through art, music, film, books, podcasts, press, and more.

For years, Keith was scheduled to be executed by the State of Ohio on November 16, 2023, despite no physical evidence linking him to a crime. In October 2023 Keith received a temporary reprieve, delaying his execution to January 2027. He continues to fight for a new trial to defend his innocence in court. Whatever happens to Keith, DIGEST will continue to create awareness of his case and the plight of so many trapped in his situation.

To learn more about Keith and get involved: http://keithlamar.org

COMPLETE TEXT OF KEITH’S POEMS

Video 1

Aaaah, this place
I was twenty-five years old when I entered into this space
White walls, steel bed, toilet, and sink
It’s impossible to think of it as anything other than a torture chamber
The strain, mmmph
It’s impossible to explain what it felt like to be swallowed
To wallow in my own misery
This cell, the hell I had to go through
I can’t even begin to tell you what it did it to me
Not being able to touch or see another human being
Being punished, crushed for something I didn’t do
I’m an innocent man, true
But what does that have to do with anything?
The important thing to understand is that I was supposed to die here
Here, in solitary confinement
where human beings are destroyed by a different kind of violence
The breaking of the mind and spirit
all accomplished through the means of a soul-murdering silence
You can’t imagine it, don’t even try
It’s enough to know that I’m still alive
I’m still breathing, still pleading: Why?
But there’s no ‘Why?’ here
There’s only fear
Fear of not knowing
But always going deeper and deeper into a place I’ve never been
A place where hope finds no purchase
Constant pain with only one purpose:
I am being digested, divested of everything that makes me human

Video 2

Two years have now come and gone and,
thank God, I’m still alive
Not to say that I have escaped unscathed
I haven’t
I’ve given up fragments of myself in order to survive
Still, the daily grind has been brutal
Cruel? Yes, but not unusual
I tell you it’s enough to make a grown many cry
Enough to make a grown man commit suicide
I’ve seen it, it’s sad
It’s enough to drive a grown man mad
It’s a frightening thing to be a human being
When everything you believe has been reduced to nothing
And all you have left is your pitiful self
But there, in the crucible of consciousness
A voice can be heard:
Stay strong young man and do the best as you can
Let your problems lie with circumstance
Whatever they say, whatever the cost
To maintain is the name of this game
Protect your soul, oh protect your soul
If you give up now you will never know
Who you are, who you are
And who are you, Mr. Keith LaMar?
Who are you?

Video 3

The first thing I had to do was get rid of my learned complacency
Stop waiting to be saved, and start utilizing my own agency
If I wanted things to get better?
Well, I had to figure out how to do things differently
Stop listening to all the noise and hate
And start cultivating the courage to step out on faith
My friend, Da’im, he taught me how to meditate
How to discriminate between my wants and needs
He showed me what kind of books to read
Richard Wright taught me how to write
How to fight a monster without becoming one
You’ve got to overcome the fear and dread he said
Hrmph. Over a thousand books I’ve read
From Maya Angelou to Howard Zinn
About the Middle Passage to the Long Trail of Tears
It took years for me to work my way through the classics
From W.E.B. DuBois to William Shakespeare
I’m a scholar, a published author,
a mentor to kids in dark spaces with faces you’ll never see
in places you’ll never go
I’m a voice in the void
A light in the night
Kind of like Prometheus in reverse
I’m not the worst of the worst
In fact, I’m the first prisoner to ever teach a college course on Foucault
The first prisoner to ever release an album from death row
I’m proof that the caged bird can sing,
Can, in fact, spread his wings and fly
That’s who Keith LaMar is

Video 4

Well, there you have it
In order not to be reduced to a thing
I had to fight to hold onto my humanity
Fight to hold onto my sanity
Even while all about me were losing their minds and dying by the dozens
The focus has always been to remain focused
To see and learn from my mistakes
to live my life with purpose
The root word of education is educe:
to bring forth that which is already there
Meaning who I am was always already here
I was never the role I was assigned
but the deeper me, beneath the lies
The part that was buried but still alive
What was required was an excavation
A digging through the devastation and debris
Until I could finally see and be my truth
This, then, became the work
The unearthing of all the hurt and pain
And the removing of all the damage and dirt that was done
In order for me to become one with my higher self
The one who could walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
and refuse to fear the evil
I’m so thankful for all the good in me
So thankful for all the power and beauty we can be
It fills my heart with joy to know that even if my worst fears come true
The outcome cannot destroy me
It is in this knowledge that I have peace
It is in this knowledge that I am free
It is in this knowledge that I am me

Ase
Peace

Poems © Justice For Keith LaMar 2023. All rights reserved