26.02.2025
While presenting my piece ‘Dinner with Familiar Strangers’ I wanted to represent my investigation of this social phenomenon. I made the decision not to include any personal information about the familiar strangers (photos, names etc.) because each familiar stranger is a personal and unique relationship. Nobody else has the same pattern of familiar strangers as me because nobody walks the same daily path as me in the city.
Instead I wanted to plant the idea in people’s minds that they are having a dinner with their own familiar strangers.
The piece ‘Dinner with Familiar Strangers’ is not necessarily about the people themselves but more about the action of breaking the routine and the unspoken rule of not interacting by inviting them to the dinner.
The Familiar Stranger phenomenon does not work without space. We tend to see these people in a specific place which we then associate them with. I wanted to capture this eccence of repeition through photographs of all the places where I usually see each familiar stranger and then a photograph underneath of where I gave them. the invitation. Napkins were placed under the familiar stranger who ended up coming to the dinner.
The tablecloth and elements from the table are from the dinner alongside photographs of the dinner itself.