Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The Architecture of the Trap Project

JoAnn Stevelos · Sarah Blesener

Exhibit

An interdisciplinary collaboration exploring family archives, memory, complicity, and the ethics of looking — asking what happens when an inherited archive begins to reveal truths its makers may never have intended.

A Process of Inquiry

Working across photography, memoir, interviews, performance, and visual experimentation, The Architecture of the Trap Project is a collaboration between writer JoAnn Stevelos and photographer Sarah Blesener.

Rather than presenting a finished narrative, the project is built around a process of inquiry. Its architecture is composed of several interwoven threads that continually inform one another.

The collaboration is not simply a means of making the project.

It is one of its primary subjects.

Interwoven Threads

At the center of the project is the relationship between JoAnn and Sarah. Their conversations, questions, disagreements, discoveries, and shared acts of looking become part of the work itself.

The Archive

Family photographs, albums, letters, legal documents, and personal artifacts serve as both evidence and mystery. As the archive is uncovered, new meanings emerge, challenging long-held assumptions about memory, silence, and complicity

Reworking the Archive

The project investigates how archival material can be transformed rather than simply reproduced. Through photography, writing, visual interventions, and performance, images are reconsidered, reframed, and placed into new conversations that invite reflection rather than certainty.

Public Witness

As private materials move into public space, the project considers the ethical responsibilities of showing difficult images and telling difficult stories. It asks how art can reveal truth while protecting dignity, and how archives can become places of dialogue rather than judgment.

Multiple Forms of Storytelling

The project braids together:

Poetry

Memoir & personal essays

Photography

Conversations between the collaborators

Excerpts from a developing play

Archival documents

Process notes & questions

Visual experiments

Court Material Design

The Physical Form of the Work

The physical form of the project reflects its conceptual architecture — different materials marking different registers of memory, evidence, and witness.