Supported by international research platform Project Anywhere, My Husband has studied and embodied emergency through the lens of American Survivalists and Preppers. Our research collapses a methodology of filmmaking: writing, composing, recording, and editing; with one of survivalism: tracking, hunting, storing and moving. Activating tension between the everyday reality of a changing climate (implications political and personal), and the urgent mindset of survivalists fluent in perceiving and acting in crises, My Husband’s work ruptures and constructs emergency as as a method of navigating change.

In “My Husband Addresses A Captive Audience,” we combine language adopted from the dialogue of over fifty survivalists we’ve spoken to, along with texts pulled from science fiction, organized religion, online tutorials, and our own writing. Our narration defines Survivalism not as a title but as a performative mode and its own symbolic order. Together with spoken text, My Husband shares a series of videos and images made in collaboration with survivalists in performances that underscore preparations needed for change: actions, exercises, stores of equipment, and rehearsals of emergency scenarios. The work demonstrates a wide variety of approaches to crises, and emphasizes the importance of social roles often neglected when we consider narratives of strength and survival of the fittest. 

The title of our collective, My Husband, asks audiences to consider elitism, classism and sexism in traditional academia by embodying “other,” as we deliver performative talks in classroom and professional settings. In this video lecture, we oscillate between three nodes of split self: ""Me"" who encounters emergency, ""My Survivalist"" who acts upon it, and ""My Husband"" who articulates emergency, thus emerging from it. Together, these three incite the production of knowledge through a process of ongoing helplessness, desire, acting, and responding, as we navigate a changing world.