From the moment I land on foreign tarmac I am determined to conquer my “foreignness” by mining subculture. My work collecting ephemera, artifacts, detritus, typography, and vernacular elements—the uncelebrated residue of culture—illuminates and reveals a place to me. Curating enables me to remember, communicate, interpret, and eventually conquer a place where I am unable to claim citizenship. Through my pursuit of what George Perec called the “infra-ordinary,” I create a visual narrative illustrating my transformation from visitor to resident, from strange to familiar. Curating the culture of subculture is, for me, research. Through documentation, design, juxtaposition, and editing, I uncover the transcendent in the banal. My hope is to bring this method of discovery to Rome. My research will form the core of an exhibition to contextualize, within one body of work, my way of exorcising unfamiliarity.