Wednesdays, Before Piano. is a five channel video and sound installation made through intergenerational dialogue that examines aspects of memory, family history, and inherited trauma.

The video and sound installation was developed over a series of weekends spent with my grandmother. Through the close proximity and frequency of these visits, familial dialogue evolved into collaborative performance. The work seeks to affirm that through a process of intergenerational exchange, modes of understanding can be nurtured, and ancestral memory continued.

Wednesdays, Before Piano. highlights the ways in which one individual’s memories can become collective, inherited truths over the passage of time, such as generations. Through five performative gestures, the installation reveals the process of uncovering family histories to create a moment where the past, present, and visions of the future can be in dialogue. The installation serves to remind the viewer that experiences and histories are not fixed, but instead constantly in flux and perpetually interwoven. In remembering, re-remembering and speech, these histories are rendered active and pasts brought into a present tense.

By highlighting how inherited narratives can serve to develop a sense of self, and the ways that these narratives can construct an image of a past from which one was absent, Wednesdays, Before Piano. presents a view of the mutable nature of memory.

Wednesdays, Before Piano. recalls, retraces, and remakes, while finding space for the gaps that occur in this process of activation.