Unsettling: Reexaminations of Home

April 5, 2017
Talks
“As divisive US government policies increasingly emphasize the legal definitions of residency, citizenship, and origin, the concept of Home undergoes complex reframing. Unsettling: Reexaminations of Home will explore topics related to the shifting, at times contradictory definitions of home: as a place of origin defined by borders and familial or cultural lineage; as spaces of safety and belonging that move with people as they migrate or face displacement due to political, personal, or natural circumstances; and as non-places located in community interactions rather than specific sites.” The 2017 conference at Emerson College included four themed sessions, each followed by a panel discussion. I was asked to present as part of the third session, Precarious Places, which explored “identities and communities in liminal states.” Kazakh artist Almagul Menlibayeva provided the keynote address for the evening.   WORK FEATURED
Petrosyllabic Resonator II
As our instants 
inevitably evaporate, their coordinates wander away 
from the realm of tangible things, and instead may only 
be plotted within the domain of metamorphic memory.


Petrosyllabic Resonator corrects for these distortions by
using the spoken remnant of places remembered as a
 catalyst for the formation of new landscapes.
Omphalos
For the egoist, fossilization may be fetishized as the pinnacle of self-preservation, wherein the individual outlasts all civilizations, gods, and continents, approximating immortality. The abrasion of time is subverted, and death becomes a climactic masterwork of mark-making, imbricating man into the architecture of the Earth.
Nereus
A loom of light reflects and refracts familiar features, weaving estuarial shores of the phreatic self into the fabric of the river. An amorphous, viscous identity arises from the commingling, calling the borders of the body into dispute.