Our disappearance is already there
2015-2017
Three channel video
20:32
It is through the incorporation of a forced distancing that disassociation is evoked, and one’s ability to empathize is often diminished. In Our disappearance is already there, two silent videos re-present the physical distance between the New York City public and the city’s potter’s field located on Hart Island in the Bronx. The viewer is given the opportunity to see from two distances the seemingly abandoned island that houses over a million dead, as it is being circumnavigated by the camera.
In contemplating this distance that is currently being enforced by the Department of Corrections, between the public of New York City and the public space of the cemetery, the project calls into question the value of life. A life becomes grievable through the ability to empathize. It is through the process of likening oneself to the other through a frame of reference such as experience, nationality, or humanness that a life garners worth. It is through this implementation of distance that the lives of those buried on Hart Island disappear without the recognition of loss.
Our Disappearance is Already there
2017
Vinyl text on painted wall, installation view of Art in General
117 x 233”