The Broken Archive

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 5-25 players

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Description

In this larp, you are invited to collectively create a story of a family based on the pieces of real-life torn-apart family photographs, once destroyed by the artist’s grandmother. You’ll create characters as family members, explore the secrets and dramatic events behind the photographs by playing out memory scenes, to discover the reason why and by whom the archive was destroyed.

In 2018, I found a pile of torn family photographs in my grandmother’s trash bin. They were the images of one of our relatives who recently passed away, but also of multiple strangers I’ve never seen in my life. My grandmother never told me why she decided to destroy them, and I was left with my speculations and attempts to repair these images for years.

In this larp, I invite you to speculate with me. You’ll study pieces of photographs, create a fictional family, and live through its memories, revealing secrets and retaking the images on instant cameras. It is known from the very beginning that the play will end with one of the family members deciding to destroy those images, and the game is a build up to that moment.

This work is ongoing research on the societal pressure to define one’s identity and worth through fitting into family expectations, and how they are or aren’t manifested through a family archive.

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