ARTEFACTS
The items I chose to Frankenstein are Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the willow plate and national anthems, to be sent out into the field of literature, museums and sound respectively. I chose these fields to examine because all of these fields have strong cultural connotations / ties to nationalism / the institution. All of these artefacts have undertaken an interative process in making.
To distance myself a little from these artefacts, which are personal reflections of my cultural identity, I built percentages into the iteration process of these item. This iterative, percentage-based process also plays very nicely on the thematic idea of being a cultural Victor Frankenstein, patching together my own cultural monsters. These iterated artefacts tie the concept of frankencultures into their shape and form, and so act as intermediaries between conceptual ideaology and practical dialogue with people
Of course, these artefacts are only a first iteration of potential Frankenculture- there are so many fields I haven't been able to touch upon. In the near future, I want to revive my initial work with the citizenship tests, because the whole idea of citizenship and identification is something that touches directly upon the areas of nationalistic identity frankenculture tries to examine- these sprung from when I took a mock British citizenship test.
Even in initial forays-, it’s been really interesting to see how people respond to and self-identify themselves in various ways- each more nuanced than the nationalistic identities afforded to us by passports. It would be interesting to apply my percentages to the institution of the passport, and how that might define people’s very own free movement.
In the far future, perhaps- in a couple of years! when I’ve ideally established ongoing cycles of dialogues - I’d like to stretch the view of Frankenculture- and the methodology it employs to a more worldly view- engaging with cultures that I might not have any experience with so I can see how the methodology works without any cultural input from myself- and it would also enable people to become the mad scientists of their own cultural identity.