VIDEO: “Raina Lee Vs. Infinite Garage”

Korean American cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim has made a mini-documentary about writer Raina Lee and her Infinite Garage Project! As I mentioned previously, Lee offers a snapshot of a world of histories that are both materially accessible but perhaps also cosmologically impossible — she cannot know, that is, what each item in her parents’ numerous collections might have meant to them. As she documents an ever-expanding network of found objects and attached feelings, I am perhaps most struck by the clothes that once were worn and warmed by her mother’s body, and into which Lee breathes new life (a “then” and “now” pictured in some of the entries under “Fashion Friday”).

IN VINTAGE COLOR: “The Infinite Garage Project”

Author of Hit Me With Your Best Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Karaoke Domination and the late-great gaming culture zine 1-Up, Raina Lee is clearing out her parents’ home, including their detached three-car garage, and documenting this process in all its poignancy, and its humor. In The Infinite Garage Project, Lee offers a snapshot of a world of histories that preceded her as well as shaped her; she unravels an ever-expanding network of found objects and attached feelings, including (or perhaps especially) the clothes that once were worn and warmed by bodies, to give us a necessarily provisional and partial account of her family history.