Today, we don’t access information in a strictly corporeal world, but the designer does. In the courtroom, all devices must be turned off. The roles of each participant are specified and then ordered in the architecture: the individuals fit into the space, the space does not change to adapt to the individual. The designer must rely on his own faculties to feel, communicate and maneuver in space. In high-level trials, the rules are even stricter. Visitors to the courtroom are asked “not to move around”, repeatedly warned about the technology and told when and how they can enter and exit. You are watched closely and every sound you make feels like you have incriminated yourself.
Entering the court, through security, and into the courtroom, I am flanked on both sides by hallways lined with officers and Secret Service members. They all ask to see my green pass; I go through two rounds of metal detecting and bag searches. I was late due to a logistical issue with my official placement in court, so by the time I arrived, all of the authorized sketchers and sketchers were already seated. An officer led me down the aisle and into the jury box, where five draftsmen were furiously sketching the architecture of the courtroom and the profiles of the state’s attorneys. When I finally sat up, a rush of adrenaline was delivered to me, my hands and legs vibrated happily, my shocked body celebrating the return to the center of attention; it is a physical performance.
In this new chapter of American history, The people of New York against Donald Trump, the shift in power is Shakespearean. Porn star Stormy Daniels has lubricated the stagnant wheels of justice, bringing the former president to his knees. A man who only a few years earlier held the highest office in the country, arguably the world, is now a criminal defendant. Last Tuesday, April 4, Trump slowly walked down the aisle, surrounded by a blur of officers, the secret service and lawyers.
Despite this drastic repositioning of power, Donald Trump’s steps are measured, walking confidently while sporting an expression of military stoicism cleverly stolen from the generals he envies and the duties he infamously shirk decades earlier. At this moment, I am convinced firsthand of his profound and genuinely pathological confidence.
Like a bride in disgrace, he looks sideways at those watching him from their seats.
In this metaphor, the groom is the judge, entering after everyone is seated on the usher’s announcement “all stand”, including Donald Trump. Judge Merchan’s bench is elevated and positioned to face the entire court, casting a shadow over the 45th President.
Trump leans involuntarily in his seat, facing the judge. His fiancé hovers above him, holding an invisible thread on Trump’s tongue, momentarily canning his chronic platitudes.
Like Dorothy saw Oz, I see Donald Trump. Stripped of his arsenal, there was no livestream to perform in front of, no phone to echo his belligerence. Held up in the park outside the courthouse, the sounds of its protesting base are abstract but still audible from the 15th floor. I study Trump’s colors and pick up pens and pencils in shades of blue, orange, red and yellow. His face is tan with bright white raccoon rings around his puffy eyes. The glazed balls turn slowly in their cells without the rest of his head. Her hair is as thin as phyllo dough in varying shades of yellow and sand and is perfectly blown into a thin layer placed rigidly over the surface of her head. His lips are small and pursed bitterly, casting a shadow over his chin. Her eyebrows furrow and blush in the center of her powdered forehead. He barely moves or speaks, but when asked how he pleads, he leans forward and utters the words “not guilty,” instantly commemorating an unprecedented moment in our country’s history.
Leaving the courtroom, Trump regains a more recognizable form, insults erupt from his newly locked lips. He attacks the judge and his family, casting doubt on his professionalism by accusing his daughter of receiving money from the Biden campaign. Trump’s mania comes in the form of desperate scare tactics and violent calls to action for his disenfranchised base to save the country with him, in hiding but still standing firmly at the helm.
Drawing this trial as it unfolded gave me the right to pick up as much nuance as I wanted. Where a photograph signals a moment, a live drawing swells to contain it. Interpretations of Trump’s court appearance claim that he appeared diminished, weak and defeated. He does not have. As someone I had only witnessed through a screen, Trump was dangerously flat and comprehensible, living in my mind as a screaming symbol of opportunistic hatred, taking up space in a nightmarish realm of surrealism. But it was unfortunately very real and magnetic. Quiet as a seasoned trickster, an irresistible source of immeasurable chaos, he released a strange sociopathic ruthlessness into the air we both shared, patiently waiting to go away and do what he wanted…for now.
