Background

In my diploma project at ENSCi les Ateliers, I'm exploring the story of my family's emigration, from Romania to France, via 30 years of life in Africa.

I'm deconstructing my grandparents' oral accounts, isolating the emotions of the moments they experienced, and transcribing their story into objects

Process

This object materializes the anxiety of an episode in my grandparents' lives. In 1965, my grandfather was in Chad at the start of the civil war. My grandmother and mother were in France. Their communications were cut off, and for two weeks they had no news of my grandfather, in the midst of the crossfire. During those two weeks, they went to the airport every day to wait for him to return, in the fear of not knowing if he was alive or not.

We each hold one of the two “peacemakers” on our side, which records our heartbeat and transmits it to the other. In this way, we feel the other person's heartbeat via a haptic sensation produced by the object's vibrators. I imagine this object as the ultimate bridge between two people: it's the bridge that lets us know if the other person is alive when another means of communication is working. Its shape, molded into my grandmother's hand, represents anxiety, the contraction of the hand in distress: we cling to the object as we cling to life.

The motifs on the object are inspired by Orthodox Easter eggs, which are painted every year in Romania and represent the strong bond of family union.

The object was SLA 3D printed.

Credits

This project was conceived at ENSCi les Ateliers, under the guidance of Teddy Sanches, designer at Hall Haus.

Photos by me.