The chimerical, multidisciplinary world of RIPENING began in 2012 as an inquiry into humanity’s complex psychosocial relationship with time: the wonder and cruelty it wreaks, and how identity functions in cultures that worship the mythos of youth and vanity. Inspired by my grandmother who lived to be 110, RIPENING embraces the inevitable collective journey of aging—proposing revelatory healing by way of becoming and celebration of difference. Its protagonist is a mythical creature who doubles as my avatar, a She-Yeti who—covered in silver hair much like my own—learns to accept and revel in her otherness, her wildness. RIPENING distills my own curiosity around aging, emerging as a world wherein I embody my own personal myth.
RIPENING has accrued multiple installments: 5 live performances, 6 short films, 2 virtual reality experiences, and several installations.
SALON DES SAUVAGES (“SALON”) is the next installment of RIPENING. Part fantastical non-linear performance, part immersive installation, and part avatar salon, this phantasmagorical experience calls for the abolishment of cultural standards of beauty, ugliness, & identity, and celebrates the awakening of the primal self. It does this through a surreal world of concurrent happenings: live music, dance, Augmented Reality, video projections, spoken word, dramatic performance, and interactive discourse.
SALON emerges in a time of contradictions. Internet and app culture provide unprecedented opportunity for identity expression, and yet their reward systems prize idealized conformity. Entertainment, media, and government have more diverse representation than ever, yet intolerance and fear of difference result in mounting murders based on race and gender. And despite the inevitable, societal norms regularly erase and devalue the existence of our elders. SALON approaches these issues through playful allegory, engaging fantasy and myth as a means of circumnavigating news and image fatigue.
