Cortney McConnell

Thesis Abstract:

Inherited: A House And Body Haunted By Familial Trauma examines a space of dispelling the hauntings of trauma from my grandparents’ old (and my current) home through a creative practice. Writing, drawing, and performance practices engage, extract, suspend, and relinquish current and past traumas that are embedded into the grooves and crevices of the house by giving them over to the land that my family has inhabited for seven generations. This body of thesis work attempts to cleanse my home from the arresting hauntings of trauma by utilizing traditional practices in rubbings and frottage with the belief that they suspend seen and unseen energies accumulated in the house. Informed by the writings of Mark Wolynn on inherited family trauma, Mary Ruefle’s exploration of poetry as a suspension of time, and Marina Abramovic’s observations on energy and presence in performance, I seek to share my engagement with a haunting.

Artist Statement

I can’t ignore the residual trauma of my family when I’m in this house my grandparents built. I grew up visiting them here, and now I have inherited it. My grandfather, who couldn’t cope with his own trauma after his service in the war, was abusive to my grandmother. The house has remembered and retained those moments, suspended in the grooves and crevices of the house. While dealing with complications of the past, I am in the process of adopting three kids and I cannot carry their trauma for them.

I suspend the hauntings of trauma retained by my house and my body through the traditional act of taking rubbings. I write letters to my deceased grandparents to acknowledge what I would normally suppress. And I drag the rubbings out of my home and onto the land that my family has inhabited for seven generations, with the belief that God and the land will help me to break the hold of these hauntings. I use performance on the land to cope with the burden these hauntings press upon me and liberate me from the internal pressure I feel to carry that weight.

Photography by Jason Horvath. Image courtesy of the artist.

Photography by Jason Horvath. Image courtesy of the artist.

Photography by Jason Horvath. Image courtesy of the artist.