About This Project

Emily Wiethorn

The Death of You and Me: I hope my skin settled into your carpet. My hair woven into your sheets. My saliva soaked into your clothes. Because that would mean, that parts of me are still there. Waiting for you. Adjusting to your world. I hope I’m the dust on your dresser. The air that you breathe. My body sleeps in your garden; my skin the soil beneath your feet. How do you tell a story with no beginning, middle, or end? In January of 2019, I was drugged, abducted, and raped for nearly 6 hours. In 360 minutes, I was changed. It took 360 minutes to escape. Those minutes exist as mostly black holes in my mind. Memory is challenging when it’s been taken from you. The Death of You and Me is an ongoing examination of memory, suffering, and the life-altering effects of trauma. This work functions as a space where anger is safe to feel. When impossible traumas happen to us, we’re taught to accept it, move on, and learn from it. Many survivors are angry and resentful, and that emotion isn’t always tolerated, accepted, or understood by our peers and family. When we experience severe trauma, our memories get stored differently. When a normal memory happens, it gets stored in the hippocampus, which allows us to recall memories and tell a story later. Trauma memories don’t activate the hippocampus, which means that trauma doesn’t get stored as stories we can tell. Without the ability to use our words, we can’t properly access our memory. Small fragments of the trauma go unnamed and sink out of sight. Lost, these wordless memories become part of the unconscious. How do you tell a story with no beginning, middle, or end? Trauma comes in waves. I used to think it was all at once, like jumping into the ocean. But instead of crashing into me, it laps at my ankles. A steady and gentle reminder. How do trauma and imprisonment change our understanding of ourselves? How does the trauma we suffer change those close to us? This body of work is a place to ask questions of myself, my assailant, and a society that perpetuates violence. The memories I have left over from that night haunt me and challenge me. In those 360 minutes, he changed the course of both of our lives. We’re intertwined, forever linked. How do you tell a story with no beginning, middle, or end? The images within this series question time, duration, and trust within ourselves. Can we trust those around us? Can we even trust our own memories? By using repetitive image motifs, I’m questioning my own traumatic reenactments. Our mind replays these flashes of time over and over again to try and “get it right.” How does our subconscious influence the images we make? And how much influence does it take to change a memory?

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