Sarah Bernhardt - Artist 

Traditions. Culture. Time. Cycles.  The Schempf family sings and walks across the screen re-inhabiting their names-sake history the "Big Schempf Store" downtown Watertown. For nearly a century the space was a bustling center of Midwestern commerce, community, and consumerism.  With costumes and gestures, The figures in the film explore the spectacle and structure of social choreography deeply rooted in the arch of time. The contemporary splices seeming "behind the curtain" tie this social choreography  to the universality of cultural performance. The images build to a mass of people (played by Watertown high school students) traveling through the space tracing invisible sqares on the floor. The religious choral underlying the multitude of footsteps speaks to the historical presence of religion as a cultural force and it's  subsequent decline.  The title "you're  store" references the colloquial advertising nick name  "your store" while subtly referencing the role department stores played in the development of capitalism. By contrast,  this piece explores in particular the beautiful significance of the family structure to shape and perpetuate the cycles of tradition and metamorphisis.