Roots & Remains

Yesterday, I completed the 1st draft of a new audio piece. A question that I've struggled with this semester is how to incorporate my research and artistic process more into the finished work. 

In this piece, I wrote narrative describing my trip to Harris County in search of my ancestral home, Negro Heel, and Isaiah Parker Jr.'s grave. I combined it with a nature recording of my childhood home and recitation of and repeated excerpts from Alice Walker's poem, Turning Madness into Flowers. I'm currently exploring ideas for turning the piece into a video installation and will discuss this further as it develops.

The Water Knows My Secrets

"But our native country is less an expanse of territory than a substance; it's a rock or a soil or an aridity or a water or a light.

It's the place where our dreams materialize; it's through that place that our dreams take on their proper form. . . .

Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. I cant sit beside a brook without falling deep reverie, without seeing once again my happiness. . . .

The stream doesn't have to be ours; the water doesn't have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring."  

- Gaston Bachelard

The following video is from a project that I'm working on that combines a field recording from my grandmother's backyard, a bit of narration I wrote last semester, and some video footage I shot. I consider it a rough draft. I would like to make another recording of the narration, continue to play around with the sound mixing, video editing, and timing the footage better.