What We’ve Built

What We’ve Built is a multi-channel video installation and performance work that extends my written thesis, Traumatic and Empathic Witness. The piece explores identity erasure and the process of engaging with trauma through layered visual and textual forms.

The installation consists of two screens presenting alternating video sequences that combine natural landscape imagery, portraiture, drawn elements, and written and spoken text. These shifting components create a fragmented visual field, where meaning is accumulated, disrupted, and reconfigured over time.

At the center of the space, a writing desk serves as the site of a live performance. Seated within the installation, I write and recite original poetry, positioning the act of writing as both a form of witness and a means of processing.

The work moves between presence and absence, visibility and erasure, inviting viewers into a space of sustained attention where trauma is not narrated directly, but approached through fragmentation, repetition, and accumulation.