Ben Blaustein is invested in the intersection between the performance of ritual and the creation, preservation, and manipulation of myth-making. Utilizing printmaking and photography, Blaustein examines the ways visual culture transforms embodied ritual into invented traditions capable of manufacturing belonging, memory, and historical authority. Images mined from his own collection, institutional archives, and pop culture ephemera form ripped and fragmented compositions which suggests that in image making, like tradition or memory, retention is never clean, but altered in the attempt to preserve it. Through scanning, splicing, layering, and double exposing, the images bounce between analogue and digital processes, further confusing their historical origin.