About

May 20th, 2009

The parent-child relationship is one of constant compromise and often a vast imbalance of power. As we try navigate our children throughout their day, it is a constant give and take that creates the shifting road map of our world. In Mama/Baby/Dada we investigate the territories of work and play that parent and child inhabit, creating maps, transcriptions and legends in collaboration with our children. We invite parents and their children to participate in this ongoing series of map-making cycles and view how their work develops over time.

In mama/baby/dada we take these opportunties to work and play as opportunities to experiment and document our collaborative world.

This project pays special attention to how work is informed by economic struggle and mixed-heritage identity. It also integrates a new form of oral history with semiotics of the body to illuminate the collaborative terrain of parent-child relations.

The child serves as an element of determination in the work, a chaotic factor to which the work responds, rather than attempts to shut out. The child is a natural dadaist device with which to explore the world. We set the parameters for our play experiment and then allow the child to lead. This offers to the child a different set of circumstances, a different experience. If we are trying to go to the grocery store to buy vegetables, it makes sense for the parent to be the navigator. The parent knows where the grocery store is, how to get there, and how to buy vegetables. But if we are trying to make sense of a nonsensical world? If we are trying to get to somewhere fabulous, that we have never been, and don’t even have a name for? If we are trying to perform in public our disillusionment, love, whimsical nature, or mutable character? The child is naturally the navigator of such a voyage.

We have performed these play experiments in many different environments and with many different people. We are expanding the experiment geographically, and we hope to involve families all over the world in play, experimentation, and creation.

Mama/Baby/Dada is a community experiment. A creation of maps to the places you’ve always wanted to find, and an invitation to engage compassionately with a desperate world.

    About M/B/D
    The parent-child relationship is one of constant compromise and often a vast imbalance of power. As we try navigate our children throughout their day, it is a constant give and take that creates the shifting road map of our world. In Mama/Baby/Dada we investigate the territories of work and play that parent and child inhabit, creating maps, transcriptions and legends in collaboration with our children. We invite parents and their children to participate in this ongoing series of map-making cycles and view how their work develops over time.
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