My mother worked as a travel agent, a profession she fell into because of circumstances in 1993 and fell out of similarly, because of the circumstances in 2020. During the Covid-19 lockdown, we took the opportunity to stage images to her ‘dream destinations’, based on itineraries from her database as a travel agent, starting with Japan. Using multiple visual devices - images gleaned from archives, screenshots from google street view, and images captured through the laptop computer’s lens - the simulations are created on Zoom using the program’s virtual background feature. It is on one level a performance and on another level a documentation of our present stage of technology.
This work was supported by India Foundation for the Arts in 2021 as part of their 25 x 25 grant.
The research and subsequent travel to Japan with my mother is envisioned as a book under the guidance of Yumi Goto & Kenji Chigaa during a workshop at JIPFest Jakarta 2022.