Afterlives
What We Hold for One Another
September 6th, 2026
Afterlives: What We Hold for One Another is an intimate participatory gathering built around the sharing of familial histories. Participants bring an object, photograph, or document from their family archive and share the story it carries with a group of strangers. There is no predetermined order of speakers and no host directing the exchange once it begins; the gathering is structured instead by a score: sit with the collective, rise when moved to speak, cross to the object, share your story, return to the collective. What unfolds is collectively authored by those present rather than being delivered to them. The gathering, best enacted in a domestic space or at least a space dressed as such, explicitly aims not to create a stage-audience separation. Five Storytellers, myself included, and ten Listeners sit together as one group throughout, rather than facing one another across a divide.