Family Dinner 2020: The Pandemic Year(s?) is a full-immersion experience that includes footage of multiple family dinners across the United States, running the length of one full meal. The installation centers around food relationships and the dynamics of family dinners, particularly in the new age of social distancing. In a world just yesterday, where technology provided a false sense of connectedness and perpetuated isolation, it is now the lifeline to protect against it. Family dinners—once a novelty due to hectic lives and social independence—are now regularly scheduled and religiously kept, extending to even the most removed cousins and remote grandparents. We’re sitting down in front of our screens, not to watch TV or post Insta-worthy shots of our restaurant food, but to spend time with each other in the safest and most intimate way we can over home-made meals. And though eating Brady Bunch-style would have seemed absurd last year, it’s now the reality show everyone is watching.
macey ley 