GRANT BENOIT

       We construct memory like a house. Once bare, baseboards gather dust. Everyday paths and rituals become evident as carpets thin and edges darken with touch. Shelves overflow. Containing the daily experience, closets fill—first systematically, then later with forceful containment. Shirts too small that we keep in hopes their scent will never dissipate. Boxes of memories are excavated methodically as to not disturb their neighbors. Strata upon strata, day upon day, we revisit in order to find a moment forgotten or to bury evidence from our life deeper. These everyday spaces and objects, constantly experienced and forgotten, swept into corners and boxed away become vessels for memory. In viewing its worn edges and faded colors, the out of date cabinetry and stained carpets, we recall the experience and interaction of a life, the definition of memory.

 

      Eventually the house will be  bare again. The contents of experience faded, packaged, and contained. Parceled and irrelevant. And our experiences, seemingly wiped clear as if a palimpsest, remains still inundated to its core.

 

      By exploring memory through the lens of the domestic space and the human experiences that happen within, I am able to renegotiate the language of memory in a way science is not equipped to explain. By re-examining mundane objects and spaces that become triggers in our daily life, I embrace the humanity of science and the mind; an element left out of textbooks. By transforming objects handled daily, internal instances of memory are explained in terms of the everyday, the physical. Through language and common visual elements, I challenge the terminology of science to explain the stirrings of memory. Through these constructions, the understanding of memory becomes less concerned with mechanics—neurons, synapses, and data and more concerned with experiences that make memory a necessity.