Parent Trap is a three-channel video first exhibited at Keijsers Koning, August 24 – September 28, 2024.
Installation view of Parent Trap, 2024, three-channel HD Video, color, sound, 27:20 min at Keijsers Koning.
Parent Trap is a three-channel, experimental documentary where my parents and I use a polygraph exam to have a real and otherwise impossible conversation. I say "impossible" because, like many Americans, politics polarized my family and, to keep the peace, stopped us from talking about many things—especially politics—for years.
In the video, we're seated around a table in a dark, ominous, yet playfully simple space that divides us into red, blue, and purple color fields. As I ask questions about abortion rights, feminism, toxic masculinity, Trump, democracy, and more, a glowing light changes colors and triggers sound effects that indicate my parents' true (green), false (red), and inconclusive (yellow) answers.
Lie detectors are a familiar trope from YouTube and TV. In Parent Trap, I twist this format to play with fire, breaking the ice between us by humorously tackling serious subjects too hot to handle under normal circumstances.
Spoiler alert: no one cried or stormed off set. Instead, we laughed more than I thought possible, and I lived to spin the tale into this work—mother, father, daughter—looking out at the world (and our dumpster fire democracy) while building a new kind of truth together.
I edited this work to include behind-the-scenes moments that reveal, for example, that we're shooting in a spare room in my parents' home and that the production stretched far longer than the piece's runtime. These moments expose the artifice behind the setup, while the three-channel format fragments and reframes our conversation, offering audiences an active role in interpreting the "truth" created from our collective experience.
Stills + Installation Views
Video still from Parent Trap, 2024, three-channel HD Video, color, sound, 27:20 min.
Installation view of Parent Trap, 2024, three-channel HD Video, color, sound, 27:20 min at Keijsers Koning.
Video stills from Parent Trap, 2024, three-channel HD Video, color, sound, 27:20 min.
Excerpt
Excerpt from Parent Trap, 2024, three-channel HD Video, color, sound, 27:20 min (excerpt, 00:25 seconds)