Abstract
My PhD research centres on my experiences as an artist, a ‘guest’ and ‘host’ in rural communities in Ireland, where building relationships at a local level, has revealed wider notions of hospitality towards ‘outsiders’ on a national and international scale. Over time, it’s become clear that the act of being a guest, or host, is deeply personal, shaped by an entanglement of influences and experiences, built up over time that make up who you are. I have identified the hotel as an ideal site to explore how the role of guest and host plays out and is expressed. How these roles were enacted and are remembered, opens a philosophical and ethical discussion around patterns of difference. Under the title The Hotel, my enquiry consists of a body of practical, site-based, and archival research, interwoven with contextual and conceptual research, from which the perspective of guest and host are disrupted and expanded. As much as possible, I have tried not to abstract the stories shared with me, but rather to contextualise them. Through contextualising them, the stories have generated further research, narratives, and dialogue, that I pass on and share with others. I strive throughout this act of storytelling to account for the complexity of hospitality – through issues of power, politics, culture, and identity, born out of conversations and encounters in a rural Irish town, that set me on a trajectory of making sense of the historical and cultural conditions that lie beneath or behind my Irish identity.
Presenters
Greer Mac keoghPhD Candidate and Associate Lecturer, Art, Critical Practice and Creative Research, UAL, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Hospitality, Gifts, Storyteller, Critical Practice, Communities
