“Dérive: Refuse, Redemption, Recollection” is a collaborative installation by Carissa Henriques and Kate Daughdrill. The artists invited 100 participants to collect a peice of “trash,” note where they found it, and give it a name. The jars of trash were then lit and hung over a giant printed, map of Charlottesvile according to where they were found.

The opening reception was a very special night…and the installation initiated more conversations with passerbys than any exhibition thus far. The artist statement below provides some insight into the project.

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The Situationist practice of dériving is an attempt to analyze the totality of everyday life through the passive movement through geographical space. To dérive is translated as to drift. This project is an investigation into the possibility of collaborative drifting, collecting, and recontextualizing.

Refuse: This project is political. This project is about where we go and where we don’t go. This project is about walking and driving. It is about the city of Charlottesville and its neighborhoods. It is about what we see and don’t see. It is about accumulation. It is about reexamining the spectacles and curiosities of the everyday. It is about the politics of value. It is about awareness.

Redemption: This project is spiritual. This project is about low things being lifted up. This project is about being made new again. It is about being renamed and reunderstood in a new context and in a new light.

Recollection: This project is historical. This project is about the bringing of memory or attention to the forefront of our minds. It is about evidence. It is about what we forget and what we remember. It is about seeing the history and humanness of the everyday objects that are so easy to discard and cease to notice.

The Situationist Manifesto claims that continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration. Perhaps we cannot live here, but surely it is a refreshing exploration of how we live, how we see, and what we collect.