MetaFormances : the hermeneutics of play in language/art/life

MetaFormances is a correspondence-based project that took place between 2005 and 2007. Miming the protocol of business form letters, the letters request their recipient to perform absurd, erotic, and illicit behavior in order to transform the letter into something else. As I see it, the recipients' correspondence signals their readiness to play, to accept their role in the transubstantiation of the letter, to believe in the metaphysical force of the delicate printed word, to extend a joke. Each letter was mailed via overnight express courier along with a disposable 35 mm. camera and self-addressed, self-stamped envelope. The project engaged a motley crew of 32 characters - a mailman, a confettiologist, a Dutch man, a computation origami expert (and his dad), a pom artist, a pinata factory, a psychoanalyst, etc. As stand-ins for my own body, the letters enable an exploration of the forbidden, the otherwise inaccessible, the abject. Through this process of substitution, the the letters (symbolically) venture towards carnality, enacting rites of death, wish-fulfillment, and regeneration. The letters thus provide a way establishing communion, limitlessness, and transcendence.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Jahn, Marisa (Marisa Moran)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ute Meta Bauer.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39316

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39316