VIDEO: A performanceTechniques and Time • by Bradley Necyk
Isit to my left with a stack of photographs stamped on the back ‘July 1987’. There are 76 with that stamp on the back. 56 are from some day in July of an outdoor backyard birthday scene. 20 are from another birthday, my birthday, in a hospital kitchenette room. The outdoor birthday scene is a shared party between my brother and my own. It would be his first and my third. It looks sunny with lawn chairs, kids tables, a swing set, a sandbox and a shed, surrounded by a short dark brown fence. There are a number of relatives and small cousins and a few people I no longer know. The kids are playing and the men are drinking some brand of beer I don’t recognize. The women are tending to the kids. There are three birthday cakes, one for me, one for my brother and one for someone I’m not sure of. In all of them people are moving, people are standing and people are smiling. We ate hotdogs, drank milk and juice, played and opened gifts. My father is not in any of the photographs so he must be the photographer.