.    This film project is part autobiographical and part documentary. It follows my move from Columbus to a small rural town in western Ohio, and the unlikely existence of a significant artifact of Palestinian history, located in the county museum not 8 miles away from me. What is the object and how to did it get here? Through observations of nature and rural life, intermingled with local history that includes the dispossession of Native and Black communities, this film takes a winding path to the answer.  The aim for this film is to reveal the connective threads between empire and diaspora, and the culpability of Western culture in the colonization of Palestine.

    I am working with archival objects and footage on loan from the Garst Museum collection on Lowell Thomas - a well-known figure in early radio and television broadcasting and a native of Darke County. While painted as a hero and celebrity during his lifetime, my project reviews the ways in which he "orientalized" the western view of Palestinian communities and contributed, much as westerm media still contributes, to the genocide now in progress.

    The trails in the film are literal and metaphorical - metaphorically I am digging into the culture and history of rural Ohio for those connections to Imperial violence. Literally, I am blessed to live in an area with multiple picturesque hiking/biking trails, and I use those trails in the film as the sites of temporary art installations in the form of trail signs. The signs are portions of a quote by Palestinian intellectual Edward Said which ends with the words, "These are the atoms out of which the tragedy of Palestine is constructed." And indeed, both the artifacts at the museum, and the media portrayal and dehumanization of Palestinians, are the atoms.  The trail signs are captured both in video for the film and as a collection of still photos for gallery exhibition.

    Work on "Trail Markers" began in autumn of 2023 and will continue through 2025. In September 2024, a partial version of the film was screened at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, with audience question-and answer-session following, facilitated by Palestinian writer Mandy Shunnarah.