The Light Withdrawn

The project invites viewers to experience the building as a temporal artifact rather than in a period of significance. It presents a place with a layered history as an historic mansion, a forgotten home, a derelict structure, a ruin, and now a place for creativity and expression. The projection examines how historic preservation, urban storytelling, and the built environment are explored through new media. It questions traditional ideas of permanence and materiality by challenging viewers to see preservation as an interpretive and performative act. This project activates public space and engages audiences in dialogue about Philadelphia’s architectural history, inviting them to confront the site’s absence, loss, and memory through these ruins.

This work approaches projection mapping as an experiential act of preservation. The existing masonry becomes both screen and surface, contrasting images of the past with the present graffiti-covered ruin; a shell slowly being overtaken by nature, hidden from view, with no plans for stabilization or reconstruction, but rather demolition by neglect. This installation activates public space and engages audiences in dialogue about Philadelphia’s architectural history, inviting them to confront the site’s absence, loss, and memory through these ruins.