Media Murders: sight/cite/site
2004, digital video, 8 minutes
© Directed by Colette Copeland

Media Murders explores sight/site/cite; how is history recorded/preserved and what is forgotten/erased. Researching murders in my bucolic small town, I revisited the sites (or approximate sites) of horrific crimes and created site interventions/memorials by chalking the body outline, taping off the area with yellow caution tape and leaving a marker designating the date, name of the victim and nature of the crime/death. The anonymity of the places—a grassy knoll, a concrete slab, speaks to the universality of murder. This becomes any/every small town in the U.S.. The video challenges the notion of what constitutes a memorial and how forgotten history recontextualizes a site.