Threat Rehearsal

by Samuel Shaw

“Threat rehearsal: the theory of dreaming which posits dreams as a kind of threat simulation, one in which we stage and ‘rehearse’ our response to perceptions of danger.

Terrorism, home invasions, incarceration, threats to masculinity; the social imagination also dreams of danger, but its rehearsal is material. Shot over the course of three years in the United States, this photo series probes the American unconscious through its lurid artifacts.”

Samuel Shaw is a multi-media artist and writer from Denver, Colorado. From satellite imagery of Colorado’s prison system to docu-collages of corporate surveillance advertisements, his work looks to expose political fault lines, collective anxieties, and violence poking through the banalities of the everyday. 

Portfolio: https://www.samuelrshaw.com/