“Home” | The SNA Project | Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet
In collaboration with Professor Karen Stocker, cog•nate invited anthropology students from Cal State Fullerton to work with contemporary artists to design an artistic intervention at the Santa Fe Spring Swap Meet in the Spring of 2016.
The students’ final intervention was called “Memory Exchange” an interactive installation reflecting on the role public markets play in forming and preserving personal and collective memories in/for communities living + working in Southern California. One of the metaphors for the Swap Meet that the group returned to again and again was the neighborhood, thinking of the market as being spatially organized as a neighborhood block, with different homes (stalls) in close proximity to one another.
With this in mind, students sought to create a link between such a collective/communal neighborhood, and the sites that people identify as/with home, inviting participants to stand in front of a map of the world, select a point that represented home for them, and have their picture taken. After receiving a print, they were invited to write a memory or story in relation to the point they selected, reflecting on what home means for them. These are collected into a collective “family/neighborhood” album of sorts. In exchange for sharing their memory and stories, participants received a print of their photograph to take home with them.
The album was included in the exhibition “Regionalia” at Grand Central Art Center in March - June 2018.