Bringing the Dead Back to Life—in Boxes

Trying to bring back people who are missing, forgotten or dead is usually the work of law enforcement officers or those who practice black magic. But don't storytellers, songwriters and singers routinely do the same thing—presumably with a lot less foot pounding?

Today, Saturday, at the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, a talented multimedia artist will combine live music performances of so-called story-songs with video art projections to bring to life those who are no longer with us physically.

In a program titled In These Boxes, the artist Dudley Saunders explores the human need to keep the dead from disappearing by holding on to their things. With the help of 12 boxes that contain the detritus of 12 lives, Saunders will reveal their hidden stories, thereby symbolically bringing the dead back to life again.

“In literal terms, I will be performing these story songs in front of video art background projections designed to illuminate the characters and stories that I'm singing about,” Saunders told Eagle Rock Patch, adding that the inspiration for his work came from what used to be a common sight in East Village of AIDS-era New York during the 1980s: The contents of a person's entire life, piled into the garbage after his death.

“You usually knew it was an AIDS death because there was no family to collect the things, which was common for the rejected gay men of that era,” said Saunders, who is also gay.

“Many of these items were quite personal—letters, a collection of 30 years of Playbills, drawings—and many of them were quite mundane,” Saunders said. “But to me they were the only evidence that someone had lived—and there they sat, in boxes in the garbage, about to disappear.”

Saunders believes it’s possible to save certain details of a person's life, which, if arranged correctly, can evoke the missing person.

“In the projections, you will see a series of boxes that contain an object of one of the missing lives I sing about,” Saunders said. “Then the box will be filled with the video art that brings that life to life again.”

In some ways, Saunders is trying to do what the reclusive American artist and sculptor Joseph Cornell did—creating boxed assemblages from objects that once belonged to someone no longer alive. “In another respect, it is a way to bring the forgotten person back to life,” Saunders said.

In “The Man in the Game,” the title of one of the songs that is part of Saunders’ performance, the projected box contains a gun. 

“The song tells the story of a teen boy obsessed with the man in his video game—and in the video art piece, the boy picks up this real gun in front of his video-game screen and handles it, learns to aim it and fire it, then takes it into the real world, where he tries to find the man in the game in a real-world situation.” 

Clearly, although Saunders’ experience with AIDS victims in New York triggered his obsession, the missing people in his multimedia performance come from a diverse range of backgrounds. 

In These Boxes, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Center For the Arts, Eagle Rock
2225 Colorado Blvd.
Advance tickets: $7
Tickets at the door: $10
Free parking at the Bank of America.