Behind the Scenes with Continuance: Honoring Community Memories with Art
Written by Continuance co-founder Mak Vail.
Photography by Cassidy Brage.
“Tell me about a place you cannot return to.”
Continuance is a community arts collective that takes memories and turns them into art. For the past year, they have collected memories in response to the prompt, "tell me about a place you cannot return to." The memories come in many forms: handwritten notes, letters, emails, audio recordings, Instagram messages, photographs, video interviews, and family dinners. With these shared experiences, Continuance hopes to cast memories in a new light and build empathy throughout the community. This work honors our pasts by pulling memories from the mind and into material. It was founded by three women: Myra Morehart, Mak Vail, and Dani Clark. They are the creators, curators, and listeners of this memory project. We’re sharing their story, the reasons for their work, and how our memories become something more when they’re shared.
Myra Morehart (also a former Women of Cincy writer/multimedia director) is an estate sales specialist with Everything but the House, as well as a writer and oral historian focused on the changing landscape of Cincinnati. She cares deeply for her community and is diligent in making space for others to be heard. She also has impeccable taste in design; she wears very cool coats with irregularly placed pockets, and she is an enthusiastic animator.
Mak Vail is an artist and writer, barista, and “very serious” Dungeons and Dragons player. Her strengths lie in project management and grassroots organizing for positive change. For the past few years, she has shifted her organizing focus from climate politics to community activation and art. Her experience in D&D is with a level seven Half-Elf Bard and a level three Tiefling Rogue, in case you were wondering.
Dani Clark (also a Women of Cincy editor/writer) is a content strategist and writing consultant for Untold Content, who finds just as much joy in helping others share their stories as she does in reading your diary. She knows it's messed up, but she can’t stop herself from wanting to know what you’re thinking about. She gives her attention to the places we steal off to—the places we retreat and return to in our heads, that are ours and only ours until we choose to share them. And even then, they're still ours. It was a late-night conversation on this exact affair that was the main impetus for Continuance.
Myra, Mak, and Dani met in college through their large and loving friend group, which they still share today. But it wasn’t until years later that they sat on Mak’s couch and realized that no matter how detailed Dani’s description of her grandmother’s house, Mak or Myra would always envision it slightly differently, and through their own lens. Their lens that was molded—and is still being molded – by their own experiences and places that they cannot return to. There were three takeaways from this conversation:
One, listening – completely and wholeheartedly – to another’s experience is a gift that should be given more.
Two, that even after listening, not seeing the exact experience of someone else is not wrong, but instead, an opportunity to imagine.
And three, in the space between speaker and listener, there is room to heal, create art, and transform together. There was Continuance.
The name Continuance came from the process of sharing memories of places, physical or not, that are no longer here. When Dani shared the memory of her grandmother’s house, it was reimagined in the minds of Mak and Myra – it continued on and had the opportunity to keep doing so by creating art from it – pulling it from the mind to the material.
With Continuance, Myra, Mak, and Dani have been in libraries, homes, garages, tents, galleries, gardens, community centers, and on sidewalks with a recorder in hand asking community members to share their memories. With consent and care, the audio recording then gets archived on their website, where visitors can feel heard, seen, and valued. Sometimes, the recording is gifted to an artist who has the great honor and careful task to create a piece from the memory. The project acts as a healing mechanism, where the stories, places, and memories that might’ve been lost, have the opportunity to be seen – perhaps again, but differently and with new eyes.
Continuance officially launched in August of 2018. The room was adorned with glowing, hanging cloud sculptures, a recording booth, and a memory pool. Attendees wrote their memories of places they cannot return to on paper, placed them in orbs, and tossed those into the Memory Pool. Throughout the evening, five local artists grabbed a memory from the pool and created an art piece from it. The short-order pieces were hung on a wall with the corresponding memory so that attendees could see their own memory's transformation alongside their neighbor's. The recording booth was available for those who wanted to audio record a memory in a more private setting. This was the first time Myra, Mak, and Dani had recorded memories with people who were formerly strangers. It went wonderfully.
In their memory work, Myra, Mak, and Dani have hosted five memory collection events, curated two large scale installations, have been gifted over 100 written memories, and have recorded 35 audio memories for their archive. But best of all, they have connected with Cincinnati-local community and art organizations like Price Hill Will, Wave Pool, and People's Liberty to build empathy through memory-sharing.
“My favorite part about working on Continuance is witnessing Myra and Dani give just as much love and respect to the project as they do to me. We work really hard to take care of each other and understand each other's limits. They make it very easy to work a 10 hour day and still want to show up in the studio afterwards. Or sometimes not show up and they understand why.”
–Mak
This past October, they designed an installation for ArtsWork’s BLINK! The installation featured a large cloud sculpture that was suspended in the middle of local gallery, frameshop. As attendees walked in, they were washed in moving colors that splayed across the floor, walls, and ceiling. They were encouraged to lie underneath the cloud as they listened to an immersive memory soundscape. The cloud hovered above them, singing 12 recordings of memories from local humans, asking people to slow down and take the time to listen for meaning.
“Blink was a labor of love, listening – really listening – and empathy. And maybe a lot of spray adhesive.”
–Myra
Right now, Myra, Mak, and Dani are working on installations for local art centers and galleries for the spring. Beyond that, who knows what Continuance will do or where they'll be next? They have dreams of traveling with the project and creating a physical Living Memory Museum that houses a wide variety of memory experiences. The Continuance team will continue to accept memories and submissions to the prompt, "tell me about a place you cannot return to." If you or anyone you know are interested in sharing a memory, shoot them an email or visit their website. If you don't want to submit a memory, but you want to get involved, give them a shout. If you have any ideas for a new prompt or you just want to talk, do the same. Trust me, they're good listeners.