stoop

Cambridge, MA

fall 2022

The animation cuts through different scales of time and traces four stories of different length taking place on the stoop of my home: a meet-cute in 2004, a squirrel family during the months connecting 1976 to 1977, a self-motivated preservationist between 2042 and 2049 long after the stoop is no longer functional and finally a red oak forest across decades that once stood in the same place more than a century ago. Through a split screen, the animation experiments with the collaging of stories within a single space but across hundreds of years, bleeding and complicating, enchanting, suggesting a cyclical and synchronous gaze into depths of time.

The animation was accompanied by a wooden toy chest with hidden compartments that reveal elements from the different story lines. A chestnut, a bicycle bell, leaves collected from the stoop, nails removed during the repair of the stoop.