For my collective storytelling class, I decided to collect stories around the question: “What was the hardest decision you’ve made?” with the follow ups of “Why did you make it? What steps led you to your decision? How do you feel about it now?” The motivation in these questions was that there is something to the way that people index their stories, their memories, their lives. I wondered what that index might look like for different people– whether there were any similarities or areas where decision-making might converge– and also wondered whether the experience of seeing another person’s decision-making process might help someone else.
I collected written, recorded, and sketched stories– sent to me from friends and family as well as classmates. I then printed them out and put them in envelopes, speaking to the idea that they had traveled to me from elsewhere. I then mounted them on a lampshade and placed them on a wooden pedestal. This atmosphere was to incite an ideal decision-making atmosphere where a person could consider others’ decisions and have the peaceful, warmly lit table to make their own. I projected a video of one of the decisions that was hand-written onto the lampshade to add another element of possible storytelling.
The stories all live at: