Shortlist 2022

Creative Capital

Gestural Traces and Embodied Memory

Prior to the pandemic, composer Amy Wurtz and I had begun working senior citizens experiencing early stage memory loss and their caretakers to record stories about home. Gestural Traces and Embodied Memory is a multimedia event, featuring visual artwork and music, based on recorded stories and their accompanying hand gestures of seniors as they describe experiences changing perceptions of home.

 The stories and gestures captured through this project reflect and archive those of elderly citizens who have been isolated during the pandemic. It serves as a point of social engagement through listening, sharing, and connecting personal to collective memory. While the recording of stories and visualizations of movement are not new, research on the significance of gestures in relation to memory, their function, and reception is recent and expanding. By creating transcriptions and translations of gestures that correspond to conversations through art and music, viewers and listeners will have a lens through which to view spatial, audio, and embodied memories.