FAMILIAR PERFORMANCE
// Publication series
// Taking inspiration from Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgy, as well as my own field studies and design projects on culture; this series of publications examines identity through the lens of performance.
Interviews with my immediate family reveal unique performances, through themes such as motherhood, work, travel, and imagination. Even reading becomes a performance, with the series split into acts, and bookmarks serving as intermissions.
Interviews with my immediate family reveal unique performances, through themes such as motherhood, work, travel, and imagination. Even reading becomes a performance, with the series split into acts, and bookmarks serving as intermissions.
// Covers and bookmarks.
// In Act One: Motherhood, I interview my Mum about being the primary carer for my Grandparents, and Great Aunt and Uncle, to understand the shifting dynamic of family relationships through time.
// I used found photography of my family to accompany the interview.
// In Act Two: To Build a Home, I interview my Dad about his career as a builder. The interview juxtaposes intimate aspects of family life against performances of masculinity, stereotypes of working-class Britian, and Northern backgrounds.
// In Act Three: Wanderlust, I interview my older sister about her experiences traveling. Through the new relationships she has made across physical and metaphorical boarders, we can begin to understand family as an interactive phenomenon based on shared experience, rather than a benign collective deriving from shared genetics.
// To illustrate this interview, I curated a series of images from my sisters travel images. I chose to find visual similarities between different locations, to allude to the idea of commonality across boarders.
// In Act Four: Her Magic Kingdom, I interview my younger sister about her love of Disney. If all identity is performative, then through Disney we enter a “play within a play” - an escape from our own constructed version of reality. This interview also takes us full circle, by exploring themes of heritage, memory, and loss.
// For this publication, I took a series of photographs documenting my sister’s collection of Disney figures. Many of which have been passed down to her from our parents and grandparents.
