Like mother, like burr
cathartic affordances of game-making and game-playing
Iris Zhang
Project Description
An autobio/autofictional game in progress, and an experiment conducted to identify and utilize the cathartic affordances of game-making and game-playing, contextualizing the practice as a means of imbuing newfound agency, and of self-preservation. The game is a collection of episodic events spanning two decades of my life told through my relationship with my mum, positioning such relationship at the crux of one’s crucial identify formation (and destruction). And the recalling, remaking, and replaying of such relationship rest at the heart of crafting one’s personal catharsis
The game is divided into four life stages that follow the chronological order of my life, and each stage consists of one or two playable story events that are of great emotional import to me. The events in game also signify a change in my agency, and my want to recreate them arises from the strife and regret that remain pertaining to those changes. The game is as much as a sporadically faithful portrayal of events as it is an account of the ebb and flow of my agency.
BIO
I make interactive pieces. I like to work with metaphors - experiential ones, systemic ones, affective ones. I feel an urgency and responsibility to remember, to document, and to play. My work dwells in nostalgia and disillusionment as a “parachute child,” of my memory and narrative at large. I use them as critical tools to fight the alienation in both physical and digital sites of home and the mental and emotional tolls they took on me, before I was even able to call them by name. I build 3D worlds to cradle myself in, surrounded by characters and emblems from a past time. I build walking simulators to evoke the same despondency I experience. I tell non-linear, interactive stories about a home I’m scared to return to. I fabricate meaningless choices. In spite of my fears and traumas, I see memory as a malleable source for my interactive works. It becomes the bridge between real and re-imagined pasts + futures, and builds safe, albeit raw, spaces for reconciliation and the reconstruction of personal agency.