I Don’t Want You Here (2023)

5:00

In 2017 I visited my father. I never really knew him well so I asked if I could record his life story. Much of what he told me was challenging and new for me to hear, but I kinda knew what I was getting into, that it was going to be tough. I used some of this recording for a photo assignment in my first college photo class. I sat with the uncomfortablity of what I heard for years and then after he passed in 2021 my sister and I were the only “family” who could go through his things and organize his funeral. When my sister and I drove away from his apartment we were traumatized by the situation and were feeling a little shaken, we went no more than a block and hawks flew above the van and followed us until we were out of town. When I got home a hawk landed on my partner’s and my back porch. It was an intense feeling.

I made this film to process the traumatic experiences that my father instigated throughout my life. The beginning of the film was the location of first memory of him hurting me and my family. I remembered this fence clearly and it was still there just as I remembered it. This was just one incident of a lifetime of incidents.

Making art is a way for me to process so many difficult moments, moments where I was at the edge of a panic most in my life. Revisiting this trauma “space” was a challenge, but a needed one, it was a way to seek out healing and face my fears that were instilled from having a father like I did. He never agreed to have his voice on this film because he already passed, but he did allow me to record him talking so I am using his voice without his specific permission. I am also utilizing found footage of a hawk.

It has been said not to speak ill of the dead, so just like at his funeral, I have nothing to say, I just revisited spaces and figured I’d let him speak for himself.