In 2014, I began building an archive inspired by this neuropsychologist and his wife. The project is an investigation into ELEs (otherwise know as End-of-Life Experiences) and their role as tools to help us understand human consciousness and the emotional intricacy of grief. ELEs typically occur around the time of death—either before, during, or after—and are often experienced by a person who has lost a loved one.  These experiences can be interpreted in various ways as premonitions, deathbed visions, golden light, changes in the temperature or atmosphere, terminal lucidity, or deathbed coincidences.

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Act 1 took the form of a lecture-performance in October 2015. I presented an assemblage of imagery, objects, written accounts, and archival research to explore ELEs and the liminal states they create between our inner and outer worlds. Collected both in-person and online through interactions with hospice nurses, chaplains, funeral directors, and people of all spiritual backgrounds and capacities, these remnants of lives lived and lost have been profoundly meaningful to those who experience them and are often hidden from others out of fear they might be dismissed or misunderstood. Below is a selection of images from Act 1. 

Act 2 (2016-2019) culminates a portion of my research into a video. This filmic essay includes objects, archival research, photographs and oral accounts collected from an array of sources and individual experiences. In December 2017, the in-progress project was presented at BRIC Contemporary Art and an interview about the project was featured on NYFA Currents. While working on it, I exhibited/screened versions of the project at Oliver Arts Center (Oakland, CA), GRACE (Reston, VA) and in the modern chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery (Brooklyn, NY). In March & May 2020, the final project premiered at Vox Populi in Philadelphia.