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Images from the opening of ’Perspective Stories’ at Buffalo City Hall until July 31st.  For appointment please contact katrinaboemig@gmail.com

‘Perspective Stories’  presents recorded conversations with Buffalo Seniors at Specific Viewpoints in Buffalo City Hall.  The exhibition also explores mapping and what it means to present our subjective experiences or ideas as a map.  

Please Contact katrinab@buffalo.edu to set an appointment.

 ‘Perspective Stories’at Buffalo’s City Hall brings Katrina Boemig’s work in social engagement  together with her addiction to memory mapping and installation.

As you enter the exhibition there is a room on the right in which you will find her installation ‘We Build Bridges Where There Are No Words’   A site-specific mapping installation in which Katrina shows you her remembered movements in the Buffalo area.  The installation itself is hand-cut Tyvek, lazer-cut Tyvek, ink and fabric.

Throughout the rest of the space A selections of audio tracks from The Social Engagement Project ‘Perspective Stories’ play at specific vistas.  Illustrating both the people of Buffalo and a more personal history of the city.  Katrina has been working in collaboration with seniors in the area since 2009.  ‘Perspective Stories’   at Buffalo’s City Hall creates a map of the area by putting conversation into the landscape in locations in which there is known macro-historic information.  These stories will be heard at a birds-eye view traditional of maps of the late 19^th century.

Pointing you toward the audio and altering the landscape are black lazer-cuts of redrawn early Buffalo City Plans.  (The Replans) These plans have controlled the way our city is laid out today and therefore alter our everyday experiences.  None of these plans are fully realized in Buffalo today but the theories and planning of their creators surrounds us everyday.  

Katrina Boemig was born during a blizzard in Brattleboro, Vermont.  She has lived and worked in Buffalo, NY, Portland, OR, London, UK and Brooklyn, New York where she received a B.F.A in Photography from Pratt Institute.  She is currently a  MFA candidate and instructor at The University at Buffalo, SUNY.

As a young teen Katrina was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.  The loss and social isolation she felt during this important developmental time has driven her to create a practice places the importance of the everyday back into the lives of people confronted by their own mortality, isolation and insular modern lifestyle.   She works in social engagement and reflection; she exhibits various media, performance, installation and memory mapping.

She has exhibited at the Bauhaus-Universität, Germany; The Today Museum in Beijing China; The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, New York; The Front, at the Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY;  Mile Post 5, Portland OR.  And as a founding member of Saving Us From Destruction she has performed at Nuit Blanche, Toronto, ON; Occupy Wall Street, New York, NY and Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China among other places.

“Can you see me?”

Before I moved to Buffalo I remember seeing a photograph of the old Asylum.  I think it was printed on a postcard.  Behind the towers was a medieval looking sky, and before the towers a neon-ish font stating, “Buffalo”.   I have no recollection of when or where I saw this image. 

The next time I saw the building it was printed on a friend’s orange tee shirt.  The silkscreen artist had added bats, flying out of a tower, and a creepy moon in the background.  The effect was somewhat Scooby-dooish. 

When I saw this shirt I had not yet seen the building face to face.  I wondered, Where was it?  It’s location was not obvious like city hall or the Louis Sullivan building, nor was the building paraded towards like the Saarinen Symphony hall.  Yet it had to be someplace within walking distance, because Buffalo was made in a time of carriages and grand entryways.

My first year in Buffalo I lived on Richmond Avenue.  This lane was known as “The Trot” in the Victorian era.  Everyday I headed up “The Trot,” driving to school on the city streets.  It was fairly normal for me to drive up Richmond, taking a right at Lafayette Circle or just above it, at Forrest Avenue.  And though I did not figure it out until this fall I always wondered why there was such a dramatic waste of space at the foot of Buffalo State College.  I chalked it up as just another Buffalo oddity that “The Trot” would stop so abruptly at the foot of the college, leaving no room for transversing east to the Olmstead park system. 

However, this fall My friend Necole asked if I wanted to explore the old asylum and I was surprised to end up in this dead space.  Perhaps I was even more surprised to find out what was behind the gates and that it was not dead space but dying space that stood there.

The first time Necole and I went to the grounds of what is now called the H. H. Richardson building.  We circled looking only for space.  We went without devices and in the evening.  There were generators blocking any sound other than their own hum.  But we saw rabbits and I noticed the veil of trees that had hidden the building from my sight on my daily drive north, towards the park.

We talked about not being able to see the building from Elmwood or Richmond.  Buffalonians brag about its Richardson Romanesque towers though no one knows where to find them.  The vision Buffalonians have of the building is one of dramatic reproduction viewed normally in postcard or photograph form, rather than the truth of a crumbling structure neglected for decades.    

The neglect of the structure through the support of reproduction became the central metaphor of our project.  In other words, what we hear of mental illness[i] is the dramatic stuff, the bits we can fill theaters or television sets with (The postcard.)  While the reality of it is hidden. (The collapse.) And in this pattern the people needing help or treatment (the building) are even today shamed into not talking about it.

Hiding has been a theme of the project all along.   Initially we sought out sounds thinking we might fill the space with them.  Listeners would hear a swing’s squeaking chains near a bent oak branch, or overlapping showers in a section that seemed as though it might have held a health clinic, or the sound of group sings might ring out in the center of the facility. But as we recorded these sounds and voices, we found that instead of pointing out the normalcy of mental illness, we were enlarging the glamorized exaggeration of what is and what is not.  We wanted the project to illustrate reality.  We did not want it to feel like a haunted house or a place of spooks.

We made plans to contact friends we knew had a connection to mental illness, either through a family history or by having gone through treatment at some point in time.  We were not looking for people that had been institutionalized per se, but friends that had sought help, in the form of talk therapy, medicinal therapy, or any other treatment.

At this point we were also researching for unique case studies that related to the Buffalo Asylum but we kept coming up empty handed.  Realizing that Richardson’s Kirkbride was part of a larger state system we sought books that referenced any branch of the State hospital.  We found,  “The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic.”There was something so fitting about this book.  We had already decided the audience would be a solo walker and should be wearing a backpack loaded with speakers, one speaker would export history and one speaker would tell tales of the present.

After reading “The Lives They Behind,” we realized that the people brought to institutions like the HH Richardson building were stripped not only of their own anguish, trauma and need to talk, but in addition the institution had taken their lives away from them. This happened literally and symbolically, in the erasure of any items they had selected to carry with them.  In some cases there were people with enormous sets of luggage, and with other cases people would only carry a single bag, but in each story these carry-alongs of preciousness were taken away at the door and never returned.

While reading ”The Lives They Left Behind” it became obvious that not everyone institutionalized in the era of the Richardson building needed to be incarcerated.  And that in fact many of the patients were noted to be stable.  In some cases there was simply never a discussion of releasing them.  In other cases the patients had been in the institution so long that they had no way to survive in the outside world and in yet other cases these patients were too valuable as asylum staff to release.  [ii]

One of these cases involved Lawrence Marek, a man who was originally institutionalized for singing and whistling loudly on the street while intoxicated.  This man spent sixty-seven years in an institution after one night of giddiness.

His treatment and the treatment of other patients made us realize that perhaps we should actually gather stories of everyday events, or thoughts.  Stories of moments in which anyone might have been looked at as an outsider, a person that needed to be put away, or a person that needed to be hidden.  And so our approach evolved again as we began asking anyone for a story of personal flux.

Necole and I asked our close friends for stories separately, and therefore used different wording, our goal was the same.  We wanted to point out the moments of instability we all face in a time of change, confusion or trauma.  We wanted the listener of our piece to become aware of the human ability to heal or the human ability to adapt.  We wanted to point out the reckless destruction of people’s personalities during past treatments so that we might venture towards a future that is slightly more accepting of human difference and it’s need to act out.  But I think more than anything we wanted the idea of mental illness, or whatever anyone would like to call it, to come out of the closet.

Version 1 of the project was  presented on December 13^th and 14^th included audio snippets from a historical timeline, clips from a tour lead by the Buffalo Historical society and eight of the stories we received. 

Version 2 of the project was presented in August of 2011 During the Infringement Festival.  In this version we took away the tour guide and placed different more poignant stories in the walk.

Below are the list story descriptions:

version 1:

1.     A women talks about the anxiety she felt while living in a foreign country.

2.     A woman speaks about her family forgetting to tell her about her of mother’s diagnosis and treatment for cancer. She also talks about her perception of the world changing hugely after the loss of her mother.

3.     A person talks about growing up outside of gender norms and the way she dealt with it as a child.

4.     A woman explains hearing differently.

5.     A women talks about loss and survivor guilt.

6.     A women talks about traumatic date memories and her change in perception at a certain time of the year.

7.     A man talks about cutting himself too deeply.

8.     A man tells the story of almost being arrested at a friend’s birthday after acting outside of the norm.

Version 2

1. A woman talks about being molested by her father and her mothers gradual acceptance of it, which cause her to leave her family.

2. A woman talks about the absurdity of language and listening and how we misinterpret each other so easily.

3. A women talks about traumatic date memories and her change in perception at a certain time of the year.

4. A woman talks about the death of her father, seeing things and hearing voices and growing up.

5. A woman talks about the things we hold onto after death.

6. A woman talks about her Post Traumatic Stress disorder and how it impacts her daily life.

7. A man tells the story of almost being arrested at a friend’s birthday after acting outside of the norm.

blank was here, ongoing

For at least ten years I have been documenting the marks people leave in public spaces. I collect photographs of chalk drawings, street art, bathroom stall graffiti and knife carvings. I think each person makes their mark on a place for their own reasons; play, significance, boundaries, a time marker, a bookmarker, or as an observation of self. But the one thing all these types of mark making have in common is they are a way of stating I was here.

When I was growing up in Brattleboro Vermont there was a playground across the street. This park is a place marker for many important events in my personal history. This park is also the only place in which I ever carved my initials. I carved them into an old tree on the bank behind the park itself.

I recently heard that the town of Brattleboro is considering placing a skate park in this location. And while I am happy to see a community follow it’s own zeitgeist I will be sad to see this place change so drastically.

I went for a walk in the park last summer. I wanted to see it one more time before it evolves into something new. While I was there I went looking for my initials. I walked the perimeter of the park looking for the place I had carved all those years ago. But I could not find my initials anywhere. They were gone. The proof of my existence or my ties to this place had either been covered over with mature bark, chopped down, or turned back into the forest floor.

This made me wonder were all my friends’ marks from this place and time gone as well?

I sent messages to the friends I grew up with asking them if they had carved or written themselves into a part of our hometown.  The following text is what I sent them:

“I am sending you this letter because you and I grew up together in a similar time and space. At some point you made a mark on my memory. And I am hoping you would be willing to help me with a small project. 

I was hoping you could give me directions to a place in which you made your mark on a place, either by carving your initials, or writing your name. This place could be anywhere within the Brattleboro area. (Think 45 minute drive.) If you send me directions to this place I will head there sometime this month and try to find your mark. I will then send you a digital photo of it.  You will have my eternal thanks.

The directions do not need to be complicated. And it’s okay if you do not remember exactly where your mark might be. I will search for it.

You could say something as simple as:
“I carved “Joe was here” in the bench behind the memorial park pool.” “

Katrina Boemig

What I know/do not know I do/I do not remember (Partial Installation) 2010

Hand cut glassine, map pins, vinyl flooring and Aquanet.

As a child I used to picture my family’s travels as though watching them from above.  I would look at the passing telephone lines and imagine that they were tracing our travels through space.

This installation is built from a series remembered travels through the contiguous continental United States.  As I pulled my knife through the cartographers space I traveled my own history- remembering and forgetting as I past through locations past and present.   (A standard AAA map of each state was examined and used as a guide, though many roads had to be re-imagined.)

get in/ get out (2) 2009-2010

Hue Installaction, pink, 2010 

made by Anonymous and  Anonymous

An over night installation in which Anonymous and Anonymous made special gear to spray paint every littered cigarette in the rock garden near their studios hot pink while attempting to keep all of the rocks clean.  (Later in another installaction Anonymous and Anonymous would paint every rock gray that they had accidentally dripped paint on.)

As a society we have stopped taking the time to listen the experiences of those that have come before us.  Not only does this keep us from learning important lessons and personal histories but it also isolates the elderly and makes them feel less useful.

There was a time when we cherished our forefathers, grandparents, wise men and women but now we hide them away.  Maybe we do this so we will not see our own fate, maybe we do this because we have made our lives too busy, or maybe we do it because as a society we have become lazy and intolerant of objects that are no longer new.

I think it is important to spend time with the older generations.  We need to learn from them and we need to cherish them.

reversing craft time:

Often in assisted living situations teachers, artisans or volunteers are bought in to teach lessons or crafts.  I would like to reverse this situation and bring in individuals to meet with seniors one on one.  In these meetings the seniors would become the teachers.   They could teach the students something as simple as their favorite song, a card game, or a craft they enjoy, they could also orate a personal history lesson or read their favorite section of their favorite book.   I would leave the “lesson” selection to the Senior, they may teach whatever they would like to teach.

If possible I would like to document this through photographs, and video.  (Although I would not want to reject a participant because they do not want to be taped.)

PROJECT 2:

I want to go on brief walks with people.  I find that movement eases the tensions often created in introducing yourself to a new person.   It is easier to tell your own story while watching the world change around you.

My plan would be to go into the nursing home introduce myself to a person who had volunteered to go for a walk with me.  And we would walk and talk.  If possible I would like to go outdoors with whomever I am walking with, to experience life outside of the home if only for a moment. 

I would like to document the project by videotaping the walkway and our/my feet moving as we speak.  It is not necessary that the person I walk with be mobile, I am willing to push a wheel chair or help out in any means possible to help the individual be mobile. 

Often in assisted living situations teachers, artisans or volunteers are bought in to teach lessons or crafts.  I would like to reverse this situation and bring in individuals to meet with seniors one on one.  In these meetings the seniors would become the teachers.   They could teach the students something as simple as their favorite song, a card game, or a craft they enjoy, they could also orate a personal history lesson or read their favorite section of their favorite book.   I would leave the “lesson” selection to the Senior, they may teach whatever they would like to teach.

LOOK UP!  2009