Research

In order to hack a system, it must first be understood. Therefore, the first step of my research was trying to understand the system. To get an idea of what people think about the topic, I created a quick survey on Instagram.

What I gathered from that survey, were the following things:

- Most of the answers were negatively connotated. There was almost no one talking about love, passion or anything like that, nothing that refers to the definition of a romantic relationship that I found on Wikipedia.

- When I asked why the answers were so negative, I found out that people didn't like the word "heteronormative"

- Even when people are in a "heteronormative" relationship they don't want to see that. This made me curious on why that is and under which circumstances I can make people realize that they are part of a system.

My first idea was to create a poster which shows all of the "rules" that society applies to romantic relationships. With this poster I wanted to get people to think about their own behaviour and maybe question some of those rules.

To balance it out I wanted to create the same poster, but with the principles of relationship anarchy – without using the actual word. People are often scared of the word "anarchy" and don't want to connect it to their love life. So, I wanted to call it something like "an alternative" or "the alternative"

Some people also messaged me and I had good conversations. Most of them were in German, but here is a very insightful one in English:

"How do I make Relationship Anarchy accessible to the broad public without scaring them off?"

I myself am a "relationship anarchist" as result of not being able to deal with the rules and norms in "classic"/"standard" relationships. Therefore, I want to focus on showing that there are alternatives to this system, the most open and flexible one being "relationship anarchy" which I will use as a guide for my project.

(a link to the official relationship anarchy manifesto can be found in my reference list)

Because the first reactions to my small Instagram survey were so negatively connotated and defensive, as if I was attacking their beliefs and choices they made in life. Furthermore, it sparked some heavy conversations, showing me that people are not very comfortable questioning their relationship behaviour. This is how I came up with the following research question:

First, I went online trying to find some less "negative" and more objective "rules", "norms" & "milestones" than the ones I could gather from my Instagram survey. Here is what I found:

3. RESEARCH QUESTION

4. WHAT ARE THE "RULES"?

I looked up many more sites like the one above and gathered all the overlapping "rules". Since these websites aren't very scientific, I looked for a more academic approach. I needed proof that all these relationship norms actually exist and aren't a product of my conservative upbringing, making me think I am the only one feeling the pressure. So, I found this:

Another approach was to use the relationship anarchy manifesto

With the information gathered in step 4., I made a list of the most relevant rules/norms to base the poster on:

A sketch of the setup of the poster:

At first I tried this style, but quickly discovered that it is too detailed and I needed a simpler style to be able to fit all the content.

So, this was my second attempt:

While creating the poster I realized that this idea doesn't do my ambitions justice. The topic is very personal and I want to make it as authentic as possible, therefore I decided to create a survey with extensive questions about relationships. I created it in German and English and shared it on various platforms (Instagram, Facebook groups, group chats, Reddit, friends, ...) and got about 50 people to fill it in. As it is a very long survey, I am happy about this amount. I gained a lot more in-depth insights and a new starting point for my project.

Here is a selection of some answers to the survey. The whole thing can be found in the reference list at the end.

I talked to various people as I felt very overwhelmed by the answers and what to do with them. What I got from those conversations was the following: make it a personal project (which is something I tried to avoid for some reason, so I never considered it), invent a fictional character and keep the interview-style. So, I decided to make a comic, in which an alien (me) asks very naive and "stupid" questions to two people who are both in relationships in the "human world". It is a completely fictional interview, with the answers based on what I gathered in the survey. I chose to have two interviewees to have a little diversity within the answers. Also, I want the conversation to be accompanied by visually appealing illustrations of what they are talking about, to make people want to read it. At the end of the interview the alien explains how relationships "are done" in the alien world, and this resembles relationship anarchy without using the word.

I sent the script to various people to get some input and correct a few things. Here is a snippet of the final version:

7. SECOND EXPERIMENT

Here are some of the sketches of characters and the overall setup:

The insights I gained from this were that there are actually unspoken rules. Also, people are very defensive about their relationship and want to paint an idealized picture, that often has nothing to do with reality. I know this, because I know some of the people who answered and their real issues, which they didn't talk about in the survey. When I confronted them with the discrepancy between what they told me and what they told the survey, they said that they feel like the relationship is something that must be protected against any form of questioning or "danger" from outside. Also, they don't want to admit "failing" in certain aspects of their relationship. Me asking questions could lead to insights that could lead to the facade of their "perfect relationship" to crumble – not only for the outside world, but also within their own beliefs.

I had a few other ideas that I discarded, but I want to show two of them, as I might continue working on them for my graduation project.

The first one was to create a set of cards. While doing research on relationship therapy, I stumbled across cards that are meant for therapy and self-reflection. These cards are used for reflecting on different topics, such as love, coping, self-image, etc. They are usually very poorly illustrated, so I thought that this might be a good idea to work with. But, with my research so far, I don't feel ready to start a big project like that. Yet.

The other idea that I had was creating a wooden puzzle, just like those puzzles for very small children to learn and apply basic skills (see picture below). I wanted to create a puzzle just like that, but instead of using images of objects, I would use characteristics of relationships. For example monogamy/polyamory, living together, living separately, having children/or not, etc. I wanted to create many options to build one's very own relationship. But in the end, only the pieces that fit the idea of the "classic" relationship actually fit into the frame. I wanted to make it quite obvious, so that the player realizes quite quickly that only very specific pieces fit in and the rest is regarded as unfitting. I still like this approach, however due to the little time left and my overwhelmingly strong perfectionism, I will keep that idea for later.

9. VISUAL REFERENCES

There is not much to be found in art when it comes to the topic of relationships. What is depicted often though are romantic and intimate scenes, depictions of what we perceive as "love". And just like most Hollywood movies, most of the media, books, etc. we consume, this image is an idealized image of "love". When I was younger, I assumed that these images are what I am supposed to feel about a person that I am "in love" with, from day one to forever. A utopia.

The photo below, taken in 1950, is considered to be one of the most romantic pieces of art ever. Funnily enough though, in the 1990s the artist revealed that it was staged.

I feel like there are some accounts popping up on social media tackling the topic of relationships. One of them is Odie from "not.yr.boyfriend" on Instagram. Their images may not be design masterpieces, but super interesting content wise. They talk about issues that remind me very much of the beliefs of relationship anarchy. Odie wants us to have healthier relationships – first with yourself, then with others. They question the norms we grow up with and call out toxic behaviour patterns. Here are some of my favourite posts:

I didn't want the alien to be too human-like, so here are some new designs that I used in the comic in the end

Based on the script I wrote, I sketched out all the pages. Here is a selection:

The manifesto was written by Swedish feminist Andie Nordgren and published on their Tumblr in 2012. Since then it gained popularity and Relationship Anarchy became a movement. Wikipedia describes RA as "the application of anarchist principles to intimate relationships. Its values include autonomy, anti-hierarchical practices, lack of state control, anti-normativity, and community interdependence. RA can be considered a type of non-monogamy, but more so is explicitly anti-mononormativity."

While this sounds very complex and hard to grasp, the manifesto offers an instructional, easy to understand approach to the topic.

My biggest inspiration, visually and content wise are the works of Liv Strömquist, another Swedish feminist (like Andie Nordgren, the author of the RA manifesto) who writes and illustrates books about feminism, love, relationships, social media, etc. She uses a scientific approach that she explains to the audience using mostly celebrities, but also fictional characters, as examples. She talks a lot about the past and where various concepts, such as marriage, jealousy, toxic behaviours, etc. come from and why they were important 100 years ago, but have no relevance anymore nowadays.

Total participants: 50 (36 English/14 German)
Age range: 17–45 years (mostly 20/21)
Gender: 70% female/30% male
Profession: Mainly students or creatives

As I distributed the survey on various platforms, there are some people who participated that I don't know at all, some others I recognized based on their answers. Still, a lot of the people are from my "bubble", making the results less insightful. Nevertheless, it was a good starting point for my end project.

Here is a brief summary of the survey and the people who participated:

I realized, that there was a difference between me asking the questions and a survey doing so. I could also tell that I am indeed biased and therefore can't be fully neutral. This lead to the idea to let someone else tell my story or ask my questions.

Reading the manifesto, I realized how the heteronormative system actually works by reversing the concept of relationship anarchy.

For example, where relationship anarchy claims that love is abundant and can be shared infinitely, the normative system suggests that romantic love can not be shared and is only real if felt for one person.

What I realized was that people tend to ask more questions about my research than they actually answer my questions. So, I figured that through asking questions I can spark conversations and make people think about the system as a system – contrary to what these kinds of relationships pretend to be, namely a natural occurance rather than a manmade concept.

The first impression I got from these answers was that a lot of people answer what they think is a norm or standard, but not necessarily something they want to pursue. For example, marriage comes up as one of the number one goals of a relationship, yet most or even all of the people that answered are not married or intending to marry. Since I know a lot of my followers personally, I had some background information. So, I started wondering about the discrepancy between what they write and what they actually live and why a lot of the people are seeing themselves outside of the system when in fact they aren't.

More information on the topic of relationship anarchy you can find at 4. >>>>

The introduction to these rules is the following:

"Without relationship rules, you’ll lack guidance and wisdom on what’s the right and wrong way of taking care of your relationship. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach in making a relationship last, these relationship rules are often agreed by the majority that these are the right approach."

This makes me wonder: Who is the majority and why is it agreed upon? Where does it come from? Why does no one question it? Looking at how many relationships fail, divorces are filed and people being cheated on or cheating, I can't help but think that there must be something wrong with this approach. Or, the expectations are what's the real issue.

This dissertation does not only prove that there is in fact a system with certain steps, milestones and expectations, but it also shows WHAT those are exactly and how much it is influenced by the "outside view". How family and friends see the relationship. And that defining it is not something for the couple, but for the outside world.

The reason I look up to Liv's work so much is that she depicts complex, serious and sometimes hard to digest content in a very appealing way. In two of her books she explains in detail why relationships fail and that there is basically no way around that, but in a very fun and light-hearted way, without ridiculing people's behaviour. My aim was to create something similar, something that will make people want to think about the topic without feeling that there is a right or wrong or the pressure of finding a "solution". Basically, I want to hack their thoughts, just like Liv hacked my thoughts with her books.