Fate dealt with life-changing events, taking the Holocaust as a focus. At the heart of this piece was the diary of my husband's grandfather, in which the family's experience of living in Nazi Germany was described. The diary was placed on a stand-up writing desk beside a wax-covered suitcase, an arrangement mutely expressive of fear and flight, and of the human urge to bear witness to "life's most terrible moments.” 

In faint, typewritten text, the diary describes his experiences in the city of Karlsruhe on Kristallnacht, a night of coordinated attacks on Jews in November 1938, just prior to his fleeing Europe. The pages are encased in wax, now immutably preserved to bear witness, but they are offered to the viewer to be handled and read. The diary-object and the past experience—memory—are completed by the experience of the viewer reading the passages interweaving personal experience, cultural memory, and history of place. 

In collaboration with filmmaker Kristy Edmunds