Throughout this whole semester, I have been thinking about objects one keeps after a significantly intimate relationship or friendship ends. Personally, I have kept a lot of objects from these similar kinds of relationships. As I was thinking of the significant value these objects hold to my identity as well as my past, I thought about others who might do the same. So, I began to ask my friends and family what objects they have kept from their past relationships.

I decided to do a video interview because I believe it is most effective at capturing true responses. I interviewed Marie Bruno (my grandma), Greg Benlien (my dad), Regina Benlien (my mom), Robert Shaw (my boyfriend), and Sky Rolnick (my friend/classmate). All of these people come from different backgrounds, genders, and ages so, I got a variety of responses for my project. Three people chose to recall objects from past friendships and two people spoke about an object given to them by an ex.

After taking feedback from my classmates, I walked around campus and asked random people about objects they have kept from their past friendships or relationships. I got a variety of answers and was pleasantly surprised by the number of people eager to be interviewed for my project. I believe these short interviews, which I interspersed in my video, strengthened my project because I got to interact with even more people about this topic.

Before I interviewed my longer segment interviewees I asked them if they wanted to participate in my video. Then we found time to meet and I recorded them on my phone.  I asked them questions like, “Who gave you this object?”, “What is your relationship with that person?”, and “ Why did you hold onto this object?”. After the interview was over I asked to take a picture of their object and used a white piece of paper for the background. Once I got all my video clips and pictures, I used iMovie to edit the video. I also record a voice-over to explain what my project was about and a conclusion.

I learned a lot from interviewing my family, friends, and strangers about their objects. Each of them had a unique story associated with their object that tells me more about the person they are. I found it shocking that they all were happy to talk about the objects they selected, even though it could potentially be a touchy subject. I found it interesting that all of these stories happened a significant amount of time ago but they were able to recall the story of how they got the object as if it happened yesterday. For many of my interviewees they at first didn’t think they had any objects they held on to after an end of a friendship or relationship. Each one of them as they thought about it realized that they did in fact have something.

Overall this project taught me that the objects we hold on to after a relationship or friendship ends are how we identify with our past. These objects are not always apparent to us but they bring us comfort or in some cases pain. I infer that many people (myself included) keep these objects as a remembrance of the person they lost. This object serves not only as a reminder but as a placeholder for the person that is no longer in their everyday lives. When I was first coming into this project I thought many people threw out objects after a relationship or friendship ended. I was comforted to hear that many people keep these kinds of objects, similar to myself. 

In the future, I would love to continue this work either through a longer interview documentary or maybe into a piece of artwork. I began to wonder how the person who gave the other person the object feels about them still having said object. It is so fascinating what objects we choose to hold on to and how we choose to remember the past.