"Although they were able to identify the Filipino Roughriders, David and Roth wanted to know more. 'Since we were both living and working in Colorado, we had been interested in Filipino experiences away from the West and East coasts. That led us to thinking about Filipinos and the American West, not a subject that often comes to mind,' Roth explains. 'As we were learning about this group of Filipinos and Buffalo Bill's Wild West, we realized that there were lots of gaps in knowledge.
'At the beginning, we had tiny, scattered fragments of information in contrast to the magnum opus of Buffalo Bill scholarship. In the absence of a complete, knowable and 'official' archive, we turned to the speculative opportunities offered through art,' Roth continues. 'This allowed us to explore a series of 'what if' questions...'What if the Filipino troupe took center stage?' While we created this work and explored its impact in public spaces, we continued to do archival research. ...We were always interested in the 'gaps,' because those absences in the historical record are not just absences: They offered space for us to speculate on what could have been and what could be.'"
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