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Transmission
Medium: Performance (Photos for documentation only)
Materials: Arches paper, black ink, cast iron skillet, audio
Location: Visual Art Research Center, Storrs, CT
Date: Saturday October 13, 2018
Duration: 3 hours
Transmission is a performance grounded in oral history and embodied repetition. The work centers on an audio recording of my maternal grandmother recounting her first marriage, a narrative of domestic violence and departure carried through memory rather than documentation.
As the recording plays, I dip a cast iron skillet in black ink and repeatedly strike a wall lined with archival paper. The gesture echoes the object named in the story, translating testimony into action through weight, impact, and repetition. Over the course of the performance, the skillet breaks and my knuckles split, allowing ink and blood to mark the surface.
The resulting works on paper function as residue, records of force, endurance, and transmission. Rather than illustrating the narrative, the performance positions the body as conduit, tracing how violence, survival, and resolve are inherited, reenacted, and materially inscribed across generations.