Marrying Realities Installation

Marrying Realities (2021-22) is a small body of multimodal critical practice, situated within a larger funded research project (To Have & To Hold, 2019-24) which explored creative strategies for social engagement and community participation with cultural heritage. By purposefully questioning normative cultural narratives, Critical Cultural Heritage and Authorized Heritage Discourse considers sites of heritage as opportunities to consider the impact of representation, a way to foster social justice (and potential reparation) often through making visible and rediscussing the complex and hidden struggles with power. With these frames in mind Marrying Realities responded to three pieces of increasingly occluded English folklore: Charlotte Lucy, Impossible Stairs, and Hobby’s Well. Each albeit in different configurations are tales of female aspiration. The work consists of three web based Augmented Reality (AR) animations, which can be viewed alongside complimentary visual art as additional metaphorical / analogical prompts.

The concept of marriage is used as a multifaceted device: to marry the past with the present, as a plot anchor in the original folklore and more allegorically in the practice itself, where virtual interactions are married with possible site-specific experiences. The work is intentionally malleable: the AR can be scaled, moved, or performed and can be presented as a fully digital experience or as a hybrid in the form of a material installation - both seek to foreground the relational dimensions of this cultural heritage / historical texts, by activating a contemporary discussion to critique the engine of aspiration and empowerment.