That You'll be There: An Experiential Archive

Summer Lynn Moore, MFA 2022, Glass

How do we remember things, events, people, and pivotal moments of our lives? Most humans attempt to hold on by collecting items relating to the moment things as photographs, videos, and objects. These items are resources for genealogical and cultural histories, but what do they actually teach us about the phenomenology of memory itself? As a person without these objects, I feel the loss of historical identity and relationships that their absence symbolizes, and seek to create a new legacy through my work. I documented moments of intimacy by recording emotional touch, archiving conversations about rituals of memory, and preserving gestures, written notes, and phrases, during a two-year span while in grad school with platonic intimate relationships. Working with glass, sound, and other media, I investigate the tensions created between transience and permanence, the delicate and durable, and morality and immorality. This inherently emotional undertaking will become my material mementos, and give voice to my history, the development of my core identity, and the empathetic connections we build via shared difficulties, recoveries, and newfound happiness.