A Bond Beyond Words

Family is the first social group that a unit belongs to, and it is the primary source of support, care, and love. Kinship with specifically the parent-child relationship is important because it provides a sense of connection and belonging that is essential for both human beings and animals. This emotional bond is undebatable in the case of humans and any instances of forceful separation of children from their parents are heavily discussed and sensationalized in a public debate. Due to the prominent inequality and hypocrisy toward the validity of kinship in certain species, we decided to give our artificial creature this exact trait.

BACKGROUND

Throughout the 20th century the Australian federal and state government removed children of the indigenous population from their parents. These aboriginal children are not referred to as the "Stolen Generation."¹ Even more recently, the federal government of the United States started placing children of illegal immigrants in border camps where they stayed separated from their parents sometimes for months.²  It is easy for the general public to be outraged at those cases because the emotional damage, enhanced by the interviews of tears and depression, is very relatable for another human being. But separation from your kin and the emotional despair that comes with it is not inherently human trait…

US VS THEM

Throughout history, people had a tendency to treat others as inferior or less deserving of respect and consideration. This idea is referred to as “othering” and is further defined by the reductive action of labeling a person as being a part of the socially subordinate category of “them” as opposed to “us”.³ Since the beginning of humanism in a philosophic thought this tendency of reducing different individuals or groups simple “others” stripped of the same set of rights and privileges has been on a decline. Postcolonial thought is advancing in modern society and the idea of equality beyond differences is more alive than ever. But is it really?

THE CREATURE

The artificial creatures we created represent a child and its parent, the user can see this by the difference in the sizes of the two boxes.  We put out a sign with the instruction for the user to pick up the smaller box. If the participant does this, both the mother and child will start crying out for one another. They will only stop when they are reunited and placed next to each other again. Hopefully, this experience will spark empathy from the audience, with the eventual goal being that they think about these feelings. If you can even feel empathetic toward two grey boxes, why not toward living individuals from another species who actually go through this horrible pain of losing their child or parent?

This project was a collaboration with Daphne Varenkamp and Arkadiusz Marut

1. The Stolen Generations
   https://web.archive.org/web/20060820150941/http://www.daa.nsw.gov.au/publications/StolenGenerations.pdf

2. FAMILY SEPARATION – A TIMELINE
   https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/03/23/family-separation-timeline 

3. The Other, The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third Edition, (1999) p. 620.