(re)presentation

Yesterday morning prior to my Bowler Hats with Sleeves lecture I dropped into Border looking for a birthday card for a friend. Needless to say I didn't get a card, but I did come across a cultural research probe.

Down the main stairwell of the Dundee branch of Borders there is currently a small exhibition of photographs being displayed (2nd-31st October) called '(Re)presentation' which portray's two images of seven members of the branches staff and asks the public to pick the correct tribal grouping for the staff member. I think of social groupings such as goth, girly, geek, scene, trendy, sporty etc as tribes on the basis of a Talk to Frank study on the social groupings of school children which I studied as part of my undergraduate dissertation last year. This exhibition asks a similiar question to my dissertation study on personal appearance with tag lines of 'What is self image to you?', 'image maker, image taker' and 'fake doesn't make friends' and I am really quite intreged by this social experiment. Image is so important, yet entirely subjective.

My intent is to return to the exhibition and look at it properly, plus, since Rhiannon - in the 3rd year class I work with - works there, I'm going to ask her about the exhibit and see what she knows about.

I'll try and get some sort of image to add to this post when I get along there again.