Greer’s PhD research, ‘Acts of Hospitality, the role of the guest and host as art practice’ centres on her experiences as an artist in rural communities in Ireland. When working in community-based contexts, artists often embody the role of either the ‘guest’ - as outsider or observer, or the ‘host’ – as initiator or facilitator. Greer’s research explores the subtle transitions between these two subject positions. It questions what is between the role of guest and host, understanding it as a kind of movement that flows, an interchange or entanglement, where forms of reciprocity can emerge.
Greer uses the term hospitality to encompass these actions and ideas and has identified the hotel as an ideal site to explore how these roles of guest and host are played out, contested and expressed. Under the title The Hotel, her site-specific research sets out to trace the complex dynamics of hospitality in rural communities in Ireland. Exploring the historical and cultural conditions that lie beneath or behind her ‘Irish’ identity, in an attempt to disrupt and interrogate some of the tropes and stereotypes associated with Irish hospitality and how this social construct is formed and proliferated.
