Four-channel video with sound (continuous loop)
In the 2007 California wildfires that evacuated ‘everything East of the Pacific Ocean’ my mother loaded the car with as many possessions as would fit after the dog and my sister. At the last minute she went back and put her wedding china and family silver in the backyard swimming pool and drove away. Our house was spared by a few streets. Later she e-mailed me a photograph of our family heirlooms at the bottom of an ash filled pool. I found the inherent contradiction of drowning your possessions in order to save them compelling. It also made me question what we choose to save. Traditionally family heirlooms were mostly comprised of “valuables”; jewelry, watches, china and silver. Now though it seems the most precious possessions are more personal, the souvenirs of ones life, the items that offer irrefutable proof of ones existence. They are the items that most spark ones memory, photographs, home videos and recordings. They are too fragile to drown and would never survive a fire.
