Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr is a performance, installation and archive that preserves the living memories of eight Black matriarchs of the North and South sides of Houston, TX. Their shared stories will be the source for original sound scores, choreographies, and garments experienced as an installation, performance, album, feast, online archive, anthological catalog, and responsive interdisciplinary practice.
The project is set to premiere in Houston in April 2024. Hearn is currently developing a memory-keeping practice that will tour Pittsburgh, PA, and New York, NY as a way to archive the living memories of their dance mothers within their communities.
Memory Fleet is created for the people and places that have mothered Jasmine. It is for all Black people who mother. The project began with Hearn’s return home and a solo performance, MEMORY KEEP(H)ER (2016), made with their grandmother, Claudette Nickens Johnson, to build an alternative archive for her stories as Johnson began to lose her ability to remember.