Vedado: An Archival Ethics

On a street outside Cementerio Cristóbal Colón, someone left a life on the pavement — identification cards, church letters, baby photographs, postcards from Palestine. What does it mean to encounter a personal archive in a state of abandonment? And what obligations does encounter produce?

This project began with that question and has since expanded into a multi-format work spanning photography, field recordings, poetry, and artist book design. Drawing on the ethics of encounter, the responsibility of remembrance, and the politics of the archive, the work refuses the impulse to restore, explain, or narrate on behalf of its subject. Instead, it asks what forms of attention are adequate to a life that was never meant to be witnessed by a stranger.

The archive is not recovered. It is attended to — held at the threshold between preservation and release, between the desire to know and the duty not to consume.

The project is currently in development toward a forthcoming artist book with accompanying audio recordings.