This work examines the possibility of grief as a foundation for new life in both tangible and intangible ways. Specifically, I focus on the constant cycles of decay and rebuilding of lives, histories, and ways of seeing that become lost or buried. I was also interested in the way lost histories become a bit like hungry ghosts: effectively dead to the world but shaping factors nonetheless. They haunt us in the shadows until some root cause is identified and addressed—though they might still slide back into oblivion for the next generation to find, and so on.

I wrote and recorded a lyric essay that explores water’s significance to intergenerational loss, migration, and the symbolic gestures of rituals. The audio plays as the video continues on an infinite loop of its own, a nod to the constant cycles dissected in the essay.

The video work features the last footage I have of a rotting historical gangway on the Hudson River to a turn of the century steamboat turned restaurant turned wreck.

The essay reflects on how, in the absence of direct knowledge, new generations (post-migration) often work without awareness of their predecessors. Whether it’s culturally significant rituals or the long fight for civil rights, those who experience intergenerational loss use these gaps to create something else.

Commissioned by curator Anna Jin Hwa Borstam for a solo exhibition in August–October at Krognoshuset in Lund, Sweden. This work was made in response to Krognoshuset’s unique architecture. Audio recorded and edited with support from Inter Arts Center in Malmö, Sweden.