Red Always Wins is a sound installation created for Spare Room, an art space located in a private residence in Baltimore, Maryland, known for presenting a new site-specific work each month. In the room, viewers encounter a game of checkers on a pedestal beneath a bare lightbulb, with a pair of headphones provided for each player. The sound piece is a collage of two recordings of my father and me playing checkers, one from 1984 and the other from 2004, a twenty-year difference. At the time of the later recording, my father was living between his siblings’ spare rooms, creating a site-specific connection to the exhibition space. Both pairs of headphones play the same track simultaneously, but each subtly amplifies either my father’s voice or mine, placing the listener in that role. The installation creates a conflict for viewers, who must choose whether to play the game or listen to the audio. If they attempt to do both, the game is played in silence, robbing the moment of its own memory.