This serves as a record for the last three years of my practice, tracing the ideas that inform my work, research on acupuncture meridians, discard man-made materials, the process of natural materials, and entangling reality through methods of Science Fiction to estrange and emphasis existing in the in-between. This paper is a series of collections entangled with personal narratives drawing on science fiction, discard, process, acupuncture, Black studies, Asian American studies to bring together the multiple realities one lives.

Spanning dive bars, drag shows, trashcans, and AA meetings. Ooooooooh wheeeeeee! To be a pig in a tree... [THE ONE THAT GREW EMOTIONS AND DIED] asks us to reflect on the ways we create and maintain our histories, problematizing many questions around the autonomous/collective observing/preservating of love and community. Departing from varied pasts, presents, and our constantly becoming futures, Ooooooooh wheeeeeee! To be a pig in a tree... [THE ONE THAT GREW EMOTIONS AND DIED] stands both as a testament to fringe acts of mutual gazing and, as a venue within a venue, provides a delicate framework that identifies our togetherness, anticipation, and fantasy as critical tools for the potential development of a more felt and held future.Standing as a found and fabricated social sculpture and queer archive Ooooooooh wheeeeeee! To be a pig in a tree... [THE ONE THAT GREW EMOTIONS AND DIED], brings together an intimate collection of time, objects, and collaborative projects by Alejandrina M. Medina, jun!yi Min, beck haberstroh, and mika Castañeda, sincerely establishing a record that seeks to cultivate a deep sense of community embedded with affirmations towards one’s sacredness and capacity for transcendence.

This text is presented in tandem with America’s Harvest Box, an exhibition showcasing a series of cooking videos that reveal the violent histories behind celebrated culinary delights. These histories are a direct result of aggressive United States military occupation both overseas and at home.

Chapter one of this work shares an excerpt from a piece of writing about the artist’s family tales, an archive of oral traditions that build her family’s collective story. It deals with the construction of narratives and truth, and the haunting nature of histories that cannot be told.

Chapter two of this thesis paper grapples more directly with issues of consent, violence, and consumption. It includes more referential information regarding the histories of the food items addressed within the artist’s cooking videos, as well as deeper analysis of present-day systems of blood sacrifice and colonial control. This chapter also includes personal stories that contextualize the relationships between individual and collective trauma.