[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was the fall of 1991 when two of Dudley Saunders’ former lovers died within two months of each other. “This was bad,” he recalled. “But something else was worse: I realized nobody who remembered us together was still alive. Our lives had suddenly become extinct.”
“The few objects I had from them resonated with a power I could not explain to anyone else – only I knew what they meant,” Saunders said. “But in time, I realized that most of us have objects like these, that can conjure our loved ones back to life for us in an instant. Which is why so many of us keep them hidden away.”
One response by Saunders, a Los Angeles artist who works with song and video and words, was to create videos that evoked the lives of those close to him who were gone. “In most of the videos, I projected myself into the role of these people, and then literally projected the video on a screen behind me as I performed,” Saunders said.
“But … I didn’t want this to be just about me and what I’d gone through. I wanted it to be about a common experience that we have all had. Owning these objects is usually a private experience, and I wanted to find a way for us to share it, and bring it out of the dark.”
The result is “In These Boxes,” which Saunders describes as a “social media cemetery.”
Saunders is reaching out in Los Angeles for photos of objects people have inherited from loved ones and can’t let go. Those contributions – “evidence of our loved ones’ missing lives” – will be incorporated into video art in Saunders’ performance of “In These Boxes” at 8 p.m. on Feb. 8 at Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock. That performance, a combination of video, song and text, will tell the stories of lost people through the objects they left behind.
Saunders, a gay man, describes his work as exploring “the hidden lives of marginalized people in performance art, video, fiction, documentary film and experimental folk music.” It has been praised by critics from publications as varied as Amplifier and The New York Times.
The photos submitted for “In These Boxes” will live in perpetuity online at InTheseBoxes.com. They thus become part of a living piece of art rather than something left alone in one’s closet. Participants can post photos to Instagram with the hash-tag #InTheseBoxes or send them to Saunders at Dudley@dudleysaunders.com.
