A Thousand Endless Tales – Dancing the Line of Flight
(Story Telling)

FamilyMap / Faithful We Stay // 2004-today

FamilyMap / Faithful We Stay is an ongoing research project initiated in 2004 by Jana Štěpánová on a trip to the United States, and developed into a collaborative dialog with Gabriela Kontra. In a contemporary Western context they photograph and collect the stories of ordinary people in various forms of living together, outside the traditional understanding of family. Following Foucault in his critique of institutions, the concept of the family needs to be renegotiated in a broad social context, being too restrictive to account for the reality of the lives of many people. The institution has dispersed into a great variety of forms of living together, based on love, responsibility, caring, trust, pleasure, sharing, mutuality, created through the living imagination and practice of people. The artists contribute to a critical reassessment, within contemporary Western society, of the variety of forms of living together, by giving them a visibility that can inspire a debate on forms of living that can fulfill the varied demands and social needs of people in different life situations, and to a continuous and dynamic redefinition of the concept of family.