AN ARCHIVE FOR THOSE WHO “STAYED”

We have stayed. Lives wrinkled by depression, suicidal tendencies, minds racing towards chaos without an off ramp - this archive is meant to announce that moment of staying, to claim it and refuse the promise of wholeness, victory, or oversimplified hope. We are not survivors in the way culture means it. Hope as a questionnaire has failed us - shame keeps bodies working, institutions funded, systems intact, while the narrative of recovery is copy and pasted onto stories that were never universal to begin with.

Cloud Scouting is a multimedia archive - film, interviews, photographs, written word - built on individuals telling their stories about the moment they stayed. The narrative of staying unfolds in 2 seconds. Not the life flash culture connects in us, but what we actually see: color, light, the moon or the sun. We sit inside that moment of compounded dread that passed before our eyes and did not take us. Art is the vehicle for this confrontation.