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Ancestral Clean-up
Performance for Video
Duration: 3 min. 4 sec.
Ancestral Clean-up considers implications of intergenerational transmission of trauma. The idea that trauma experienced by previous generations is transferred to second, third, and further generations. Research suggests that traumatic memory is embedded within the DNA. The inherited trauma manifests itself within the body or psyche and may become evident through repeated history, cyclical behaviors, limiting beliefs, patterns, and programmed stories. Ancestral Clean-up presents the repetitive action or attempt to, clean-up and wipe away the leakage, the spillage, and the inevitable staining of personal and inherited traumas. An audible humming arises both as a meditative practice and a soft effort to reclaim the voice, long silenced by multiple oppressions. Rather than reaching an expected resolution of the “mess” cleaned-up, the viewer is left to witness the seepage of trauma, as it slowly trickles, coursing like veins; a final nod to the bloodline through which the trauma travels.