MEMORY PROJECT: Timeline

Memory Project: Timeline was a visual compilation of ephemera from the experiences of my life. The saved and catalogued material includes feeding instructions from days after I was born, group photos from camp and other experiences, brochures, ID cards, business cards, exhibition cards etc. Bundled stacks of notebooks, journals, autograph books and chronological binders, are strewn with shredded bits that have been discarded and destroyed, leading the way to my ultimate letting go of it all.

In preparation for a major move across the country, I began excavating, editing, and organizing years of collected documentation from my life, report cards, journals, letters, articles, ID’s, transportation passes, etc. I made some progress, but found it difficult to part with much of it. As a result, many plastic bins of binders and loose papers got packed and moved with me. 

As I unearthed the boxes, the process began again, this time with more focus and reflection including the possibility of using some of it to make art as a means to memorializing moments, but ultimately letting it go.

For this exhibition I created a site-specific installation, layering the actual documents. The Memory Project: Part 1, will be the jumping off point to a work in progress, a visual means to acknowledge and reflect on my history through materials that I have saved. It is my hope that, though it traces my personal story, the project will resonate with others who are compelled to explore memories, perhaps as a key to our identity in the present and beyond.

LOSING IT

I keep everything

can’t let go of words pictures things for fear of losing it all
of forgetting who I am
who I was

Like Allen Ginsberg who had reason to pack it all away because 
he was famous and could donate it to some university like Columbia
I keep files on people I know or knew

who will want my stuff
from 50 years ago 
poems of adolescent angst
reminders of forgotten promises

without it I am not me
with the burden I am stuffed

worried

I think when I am feeble can barely walk but can still see I’ll pour through
page by page image by image

and remember 
that I have lived

Susan Napack