Song Song (Parallel Play)

  • Others' narrative of care

    Cargiving is individual.

    Caregiving is serious. Caregiving is grim.

  • Our narrative of care

    Caregiving is collective.

    Caregiving is playful. Caregiving is fun.

Methods

Song Song (parallel play) opened as a playground in which the participants are invited to reconnect with their senses via photography. In this workshop, photography was re-introduced as a balance between its intimacy and detachment, of pre-mediation and immediacy, of fun/action and stillness/strangeness through practices (but more like play). Participants were able to take prints home.

In Vietnamese, song means "at the same time" or "parallel." It goes with what the workshop is about: creating art/working alongside someone else. In math, song song means they are always at the same time, on the same length, but never meet. A connection. This workshop brought us all the way back to when we were kids, to when we were able to play alongside someone without even knowing their name.

Participants also brought objects important to them that they wanted to photograph. We photographed important objects, each other, our environment, and our expressions of play.

Below you can find some of the objects we photographed and the stories behind them.

A mannequin torso dressed with a floral shirt, a pearl necklace, and lingerie, illuminated by blue and purple stage lighting, on a round black pedestal.

For as long as I could remember, words made me feel powerful. Where I couldn’t speak, I could write, and people took me seriously. I brought a notebook that my partner gifted me with my favorite line from the poem won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton. I also brought several sapphic books I own. These are all authors whose writing styles I strive to imitate- Jill Gutowitz for her emphasis on pop culture in her understanding of her sapphic identity (a huge part of my coming of age as well), and both Isabel Yap and Carmen Maria Machado for their knowledges of the fantastical, horrific, and obscene, and their abilities to write it beautifully.

Important Objects

My grandmother passed away when she was very young, and she was against photography so we don’t have any photos of her. When my mother became an orphan, her siblings had to get rid of many of my grandmother’s things. When my mother came to America, the only thing she had of her mother’s was this sari. Today, it’s the only thing left of my grandmother. My mother gave me a piece of the sari, which I wear as a scarf on special occasions, and she kept the other half. Photographing this scarf feels like immortalizing my grandmother’s memory.

A person with shoulder-length hair holding a book in front of their face. They are standing in front of a black and white spotted curtain with purple and pink lighting. They are wearing a black sleeveless top and light-colored high-waisted jeans, with a stack of three books resting on their arm. The books have titles related to girls and relationships.
Two hands reaching toward each other, one from the left and one from the right, against a colorful 80s-style background with blue, pink, and black abstract patterns.
A white card with handwritten notes pointing to a large black number four. The notes say 'clongside, close-up' on the left and 'together, black white' on the right, with the number four in the center of the card, placed on a multicolored autumn leaf-patterned fabric.

Play

The final part of the workshop was invitation to play. We were put into random pairs and given postcards with different words based on the environment of the photo studio we were in, as well as different actions we could take together. We were encouraged to play using these concepts, and see which practices of play we wanted to document.