Where is the voice coming from (2018) is related to Welty’s story as the spoken word in the video is adapted from her short story by the same name. In this narrative, Welty writes from the perspective of a murderer, not just any murderer, but a white supremacist’s thoughts, feelings, and sense of misguided moral outrage behind the ultimate act of taking another human’s life. In the video, I collaborated with other salem2salem writers and musicians to interpret Welty’s story in sound and color. The images are all of burning books recorded in Salem, Germany edited the together with audio collected from around the castle and recorded with musicians Ralf Bauer and Michael T. Otto. How do we tell and retell our narratives? Is our story linear? Is our memory certain? What ideas are dangerous and who decides to destroy or endorse a work of fiction or art? The act of creation and beauty arising from destruction, while painful at times, is necessary. How can we heal if we do not see the wound?

*Full length 7 min/49 sec video included an unacceptable racial epithet as written in the original short story when shown in two exhibitions. Any future exhibition of this work will exclude the epithet. The artist sincerely apologizes and accepts full responsibility for the inclusion of this word.