I'm interested in memory as a personal experience, but also a cultural one. How is our identity defined and shaped by the latent memory of generations past?
This series studies gender as a ritualized performance through prescribed actions by means of language in etiquette books and advice columns. The texts utilized vary in time periods, including anywhere from the 18th century to the present. I'm examining text as a source that shapes our identity and relationships with one another, but in truth seeking out one source is futile. These codes come to us in a complicated network with no original manual. In this work my friends and I perform for the camera. The theatricality of our actions is stressed by the backdrops and lighting of the studio environment. Some of the etiquettes we are performing are foreign to us, performances forgotten long ago. Others are familiar. Still, the text instruction amplifies the strangeness and formality of these common gestures. We were never told how or why to perform in this way; the memory is simply there.
