Dear Dr. Zarse
Ongoing archival project, begun 2021
Since 2021, I have received recruiting communications for a psychiatrist who shares my name: emails, voicemails, texts. I stopped counting.
The archive existed for years before I understood it as one. Taken together, the messages compose an inadvertent portrait of the American mental health labor market: its urgency, its geographic desperation, its willingness to recruit anyone whose name fits the line. Six-figure signing bonuses, relocation packages, loan forgiveness. The offers arrive steadily, addressed to a person I am not, for a career I do not have.
I am an artist. No one has ever cold-called to offer me a salary for that.
The archive is the work.