The messy part of this obsessive, ten year performance is that these polaroids are never really
organized efficiently. The most orgainzied they get
is in an album, or in a shoebox. Now they can't
really go into an album or a shoebox until they have
been sequenced. And some periods of my life lack the
organization and focus to date the images at the time
of exposure.

They end up in little piles on my
nighttable, dresser, medicine cabinet, on top of the
refrigerator, on bookshelves, any surface where I
might linger in my home. Any surface that seems
solid, and protected enough from a careless swing of
the elbow, or the brush flowing clothing.

So for the document/obsess performcance I collecteed a year's worth of these piles and wrapped them in plastic baggies, undated, unsequenced save for the relative order existing in each pile. I put them in a shoebox and brought them to the stage.

"What you are about to see is a performance:"

A card table. Stacks of polaroids, still wrapped in plastic baggies, a couple of polaroid cameras, dozens of empty polaroid boxes and film cartridges, pens and pencils.
A date stamp that goes until Dec 31, 2012. A video
camera poised over my shoulder,
projecting larger what is happening in real life:
A careful examination of the memory of life; the
fragile and imprecise constitution of a personal
narrative; A biography in process; Me trying
metaphorically to put my life in order.
And the describing, the remebering and the telling of the stories of each day.
These photographs are not only visual Journal, or the photographic memoirs that will serve as the notes when at a ripe age I will write an autobiography, but they are a mimesis of my life, a physical body that is imbued with special powers of insight and organization, not unlike my own personal voodoo doll.

My grandparents are survivors of Nazi atrocities, so growing up as a Jew in Kentucky produced as special anxiety that made me cognizant of the temporal nature of existence: I could be harvested as easily as a tender dandelion blossom.
It has never been enough for me to have and hold memories in my consciousness. I have a compulsion to concretize the images and the stories that weave together my selfhood.

I make a picture of my self every day, and will continue to do so for a span of ten years. November 23, 2002 signifies the 1/3 mark, the one thousand two hundred seventeenth (1217- coincidently my birthday, December 17) consecutive day in which I have made a Polaroid image of my self. These pictures not only tell a kind of a story about the changes that take place in my life, evident on my face, or in simple actions and expressions performed for the camera, but serve as a kind of sketch book; a simple structure that allows me to serve The Great Mystery; It is a response to the old adage, "Idle hands are the Devil's playthings;" It is a new mitzvah that I invented for my self, an act that is simultaneously a good deed and a commandment from God.
stress the service and action: the doing, the making, the giving of small things make a difference in the grand scheme; that we are all responsible for each other; and that the highest ideals of humanity - beauty, compassion and love - are attainable.
The work's content is sustained with the words and meaning of Ha Rav Tarfon: "It is not your job to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it."

"Thank you very much. You've been a lovely audience."