What Hadn't Happened
"In April 1934, Gloria Harris drowned in a copper wash boiler on the back porch of her family’s farmhouse in Big Woods Township, Minnesota. She was 18 months old at the time. Her sister Olive was not quite three. She was the only one there when it happened. She was blamed for her sister’s death. Gloria’s sister Olive was my grandmother..."
A multimedia essay unearthing a painful family secret. Winner of The Atavist's Digital Storymakers Award, Grand Prize in Visual Storytelling, 2013
Coerced Confessions
In this video series, I “coerce” dramatic reenactments of notorious confessions from the bodies of unwitting actors. The videos are produced by rearranging source material from real-life confessions into fictional monologues; recording actors performing those monologues with no knowledge of their source; and reverse-engineering those performances back into the original confessional texts. Three two-channel videos designed for an installation environment.
Selected for On the Body, national juried exhibition, Gallery 263, Cambridge, MA, 2016
Published with a companion essay in Liminalities, vol. 13, issue 2, 2017
Her Husband's Wife's Pancreas
"In 1953, Jay and Olive moved to Maplewood Drive, three days and two houses between them. / They were neighbors. Jay's wife Helen was Olive's friend. / Helen died in 1957. Cancer of the pancreas. / In 1960, Jay and Olive moved to Boulevard Park, four kids and a dog between them. / They were married. Jay's wife Olive was my grandmother. / Olive died in 2010. Cancer of the pancreas..."
An imagined "conversation between my grandparents," composed from fragments of oral history recordings following their deaths.