Dear _____, Please Imagine my Birthday

Harold Hejazi

How much of our sense of identity is filtered through social memory—the memory of others and our own? This is a reflection on a performative birthday which attempted to transplant the artist’s community from Victoria, Canada to Helsinki, Finland. Through the medium of larp, the performance explored the ways in which the self is socially produced and sustained through interaction, memory and community. In so doing, the larp offered a self-portrait in which the story of a self was produced collectively.

A major project in the Live Art & Performance Studies master’s program is the organization and curation of a Live Art festival/conference named LAPSody festival. This festival takes place every two years at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki.   The opening night of the 7th LAPSody Festival fortuitously landed on the evening of my thirtieth birthday. After taking on the daunting position of technical manager for the festival’s seventeen artists, I felt I wouldn’t have time to celebrate it. In an attempt to subvert my academic obligation, or have my cake and eat it too, I decided to organize a grand birthday performance larp. Larp seemed an appropriate medium for my performance as it allowed me to combine and reimagine my roles as curator, technical manager, student and birthday boy.

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