Dating back to the Hebrew Bible, we are required to remember and adjured not to forget.
Through human connection and dynamic artistic exploration, my work seeks to spotlight memories and the stories of self.
In “The Memory of America: Remember Your First Baseball Game,” we see ourselves in the memories of diverse strangers, through a uniquely American experience connecting generations. Baseball is merely the turnstile.
The evolving multimedia project is about age, race, economic class, religion, politics, gender, love, education, assimilation, immigrants, community, disability, humanity, equality, family, the past, the present, the individual, the collective.
All interactions begin: “Remember your first baseball game?” Memories return. I listen, carefully. Video is captured through an iPhone, placed to the side before the dialogue begins. We speak face-to-face. The conversations occur across the country, but not in a ballpark.
Never identified by their job or what they do, simply their name, stadium and year. Interview subjects include public figures, poet laureates, plumbers. None of that is shown, for none of that matters.
In “When The Buildings Cheered,” for five springtime weeks during the pandemic, I walked the sidewalks of New York to capture the nightly 7:00 PM gratitude for front line workers. Wearing a new face mask and holding an old iPhone 5s, I walked on nearly deserted streets that felt both familiar and foreign.
In a nation polarized and frayed, these multimedia memory installations — through single-channel video and disparate creative tools — inspire empathy, connection and understanding.
At some point, unless preserved, memories die. The artistic influence to keep these memories alive… and remember? You. America. All of us.
