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Dacaments: Fidencio Fifield-Perez

In the last year, it’s been apparent that my simple state of being is under threat and open for scrutiny and debate. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an executive order enacted by Obama in July 2012, afforded me the ability to drive and to work legally without fear of deportation. On a personal level, DACA allowed me to accept funding to pursue my master’s at the University of Iowa in Fall 2013. I surrounded myself with potted plants to create a sense of comfort and security during my travel to a new land, the Midwest.

In order to qualify for DACA, nearly 800,000 undocumented youth have had to prove our existence by collecting and presenting to the government ephemera, bills, school report cards, social media posts, mail, and receipts. How is it that the government trusts and honors papers over the people they represent? The process of applying and reapplying for DACA ingrained in me the habit of holding on to envelopes, whether from the government, loved ones, museums and galleries, my husband. By painting the envelopes, I'd like to believe I am no longer just a passive force in this unbalanced relationship I have with the government.

When asked, “Where is home?” I often reply, “Home is where the plants are.” During the five years I held DACA, I traveled the country. Along the way I collected, was gifted, and sprouted plants. They are a map of relationships and my last five years living in and out of the Midwest. For this reason, none of my plants are able to be rooted to any land. 

Suppose a line transcends a plane: Tom Henry and J.Michael Ford

Suppose a line transcends a plane. And that line is a phantasmal wandering of suggestion and desire that demarcates space whether it be physical or metaphorical. Or a way to actualize imagination as fluid but tangible expression through different conduits.

As the line preposed beyond what we immediately see, the cumulation of narrative percolates to suggest interactions between material and humans as well as tools to delineate imagined landscapes or map unexplored territories. 

The Seagull Skwaled: Jameson Doody

I told a seagull "go back from whence ye came! You belong by the sea!" Shortly thereafter I realized I sounded like a republican so I apologized profusely to the seagull. I told them "you belong wherever you want to be," and it skwaled at me and I knew it understood.

And then they spoke to me in a booming voice that rang from the heights, from Jerusalem, from Zion, the voice was heard in the thunder and in the roar of the sea and they said, "fuck off." And that's when I knew I should never try to pet or feed a wild animal. 

Representation and the real each reflects, inspires, and copies the other. This imitation erodes a sense of self.

This work addresses an ethics of the contact points between "the real" and "the representational". It is a response to the echoes of the relationship between the confusion of "the live" as being opposed to "the record" -- confused, I say, for why shouldn't the live also be a record?