I'm (Not) Telling You Everything—This is A Memory

Creating the conditions of my own return, cooperating with disaster, celebrating collapse 

by Alex Wiseman

I'm Telling You Everything...is an unflinching and intimate history of trauma, shame, survival, and resilience told through narrative, poetry, sound, and image. I'm (Not) Telling You Everything... examines what it means to be a body, to pee your pants in a GI Joes, to stand in the open char and bloom of a recently burned forest, and to trace your connection to other bodies through time. Read, listen, and then respond in a companion volume designed for readers to tell their own stories. 

Alex Wiseman (Chippewa (Anishinaabe), Irish, Italian) was born on Mt. Tabor in SE Portland and grew up in the forests, high deserts, and intertidal zones of the Pacific NW. In 1993 Wiseman emigrated to Australia and lived there until returning to Portland in 2003. In the early 2000’s Wiseman became known for socially engaged work such as Tea Project, Kitchen Sink PDX, and Place, a 30,000 sq.ft. gallery he co-founded and directed with Gabe Flores that was located at the top of the Pioneer Place Mall in Portland, OR. Wiseman began exploring wildfire ecology and the creative possibilities of charcoal collected from wildfire sites during a 2015 residency at the environmental non-profit Bark. He now leads workshops and group site visits into burned areas in the forest to create scientifically informed, creatively inclined experiences designed to demonstrate that fire affected areas are not sites of devastation that we need to fear, but rather places of unique biodiversity, regenerative possibility, and self-renewal where we can deeply connect. Alex’s work has been exhibited nationally, featured in High Country News, Oregon Arts Watch, the Oregonian, the New York Times, and included in Fire Season I & II a monograph series examining art, activism, and fire ecology. Alex’s creative practice explores themes of integration, balance, and patterns and conditions that help or hinder our ability to connect with ourselves, other humans, our animal siblings, plant relatives, and the biosphere.