rejected stories is a site-specific installation with variable dimensions and configurations. see the statement button on this page for information

to read more on the project, http://rejectedstories.weebly.com/

rejected stories is a small, site-specific installation that explores the idea of the memory that never becomes a memory. What of all the "grand plans" for travel and adventure we make with our friends at the bar that never materializes, the crushes and unrequited loves that never turn into anything other than a knot in your stomach, the New Year’s resolutions that have ended before they have even begun, and the painting that never was more than a doodle in one’s sketchbook. How is it that those things seem so important to us at the time we are pondering/obsessing about them, but can be cast away so easily when the path becomes difficult, cost prohibitive or simply just forgotten about.

My work has long used the book as metaphor for memory and personal stories, usually in the context of actual memories that have been forgotten due to afflictions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s – here I explore those seedlings of ideas that are never nurtured and therefore never realized into an actual event to trigger a memory being recorded into one’s mind.

The popular culture image of the writer sitting at the typewriter toiling away, ripping sheet of paper after sheet of paper out of the typewriter and crumpling it up, discarding those sparks of thoughts and ideas so haphazardly into the garbage until the can overflows… this image did much to inform the initial version of this work. How soon before we fill our own life’s trash can with unrealized memories and it begins to overflow, and therefore, overwhelm us? Would we even notice?

As this work continues to be explored and take shape, I may be eliciting anonymous responses from participants (as well as myself) of their own rejected stories in life as source material. And should this project never be realized, at least it will become its own self-fulfilling idea.

Sarah E. Rehmer

Sarah E. Rehmer