collaborative performance / video
collection, land, gathering, attention, change, site, place, ecosystems
June 2022

Can I collaborate with my father, who has an unspecified neurological disorder, on an artwork?

My father was a scientist. Now, my father cannot look after himself. My father is a scientist. I help look after him, from 4,815 kilometers away. When my siblings and I were children, our father would tell us stories. Walking the mudflats of the Minas Basin, I phoned my father and asked him to tell me what to draw, to instruct me how to make marks in the mud. What unfolded was a narrative story much like the ones he would tell us as children. Adventures involving flight, struggle, injury, and aid came back to my mind as I illustrated, in the mud, the story he told. Collaborating with him in this way allowed us to make a work of art together, giving him agency to tell the story he was most interested in sharing. Shortly thereafter, it was washed away.