here together, like before (nothing looks like God quite as much as time does)

video

Tucson, Arizona

2023

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Here Together, Like Before explores platonic, romantic, and familial intimacy, and the labor of caregiving. It deals in life and loss, honoring those whose touch I am lucky enough to receive and reciprocate, and acting as an ongoing acceptance practice for the many I cannot touch or invite into my home, for whom I cannot pour tea or run a bath. They are alive, they are dead, they aren’t yet born, they’re not here with me. I pour water for them, I continue the motions of my hands and arms for them, I record their absence in visual space for posterity, for mourning, for the future. The project poses questions about the possibilities of queer self-parenting strategies, the economy of time, and what we leave behind. I work in 4D to be explicit about the labor and time involved in cooperative connection, and to engage in embodied explorations of repetition, endurance, trust, and fear–of love as an action word. My process includes identifying and testing different styles of interrogation to confront the conjoined natures of subject and gaze.