Vividly poignant, or seemingly mundane and insignificant, memories make up part of our sense of self and feeling of connection to places. Here, Kansas City is a collection of individuals personal memories retold as stories by an actor at the Center for Contemporary Practice Crossroads Gallery throughout April 2019.  

Be it a moment in a bar, a forest, a lake, a suburban front lawn or an old hardware store, these painstakingly observed moments brought together, touch on the complex diversity of our subconscious connection to geography and bring to the fore the human aspect of place.

The exhibition consisted of a seating area, a phone line and a speaker. To listen to the stories, the audience used a preset phone connected to the standing speaker to call the actor who would read a randomly selected story followed by another and another until the caller hung up.

The stories were gathered with a specific interview exercise derived from theatre rehearsal methods, psychoanalysis and police cognitive interview techniques devised to jolt witnesses memories about the details of a past events.For Here, Kansas City the methodology took the participants on a journey through their own lived experiences.

The stories presented at the exhibition are a combination of moments generously shared by students and staff of the Kansas City Arts Institute during Sans façon's residency, and from previous presentations in Calgary, Canada and Laramie Wyoming

Thank you to the students and staff who collaborated and generously shared their memories through the cognitive interview process.