Me, Borrowed.
This is Bhar's MAD project: We all carry snippets of the different people we've met throughout our lives. Without realizing, you inherit or rather "borrow" certain traits from these poeple that you carry with you for life. Maybe it's the way you peel a banana, just like your Grandma used to do. Or maybe it's your love for a certain band, which your childhood best friend introduced to you. With this project, I want to make people explore these "borrowed" traits within themselves and shine light onto the many people that have touched our lives.
And these are projects from my coursemates. Do check em out!
Now, follow along to see my progress on this project!
9 April - 11 April
Just on the second day of the course, we had the absolute pleasure of visiting Mainz for the UN/SEEN symposium. It brought me back to my middle school days when we used to go on excursions together as a class and it was so much fun! We heard from so many inspiring women over the 3-day exhibition and also got to bring back some very cool souvenirs. Out of the many things I heard, these are some of the words that stood out to me. (Not in the exact wording my memory is not THAT great sorry)
"Feed your visual vocab" |
"Trust your intuition" |
"Try many different things! You don't have to be great at everything" |
"Whether you like it or not, you're inevitably going to represent a bigger community with your work" |
"Don't ovethink, just use your common sense"
That last one, was mentioned by the graphic designer I was most intrigued by: Yah-Leng Yu. Yah-Leng is from Singapore (just like me) and I wanted to know what kind of influences being in Singapore had on her work.
Yah-Leng is the founding Creative Director of Foreign Policy Design Group and is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) - a prestigious club gathering the world's leading graphic artists and designers. She studied in Boston, before working in New York for various established design firms before moving back to Singapore with one goal in mind - to raise awareness of the importance and value of good design.
Yah-Leng attributes her growth as an established graphic designer to her time spent in the US. She said that the American experience and culture encouraged her to be more extroverted and to voice her opinions confidently. Over the years, she has worked on many projects. When asked about which project was the most meaningful to her, she chose the branding of Gallery & Co.
Singapore did not have much of a museum culture as people considered that to be a niche location exclusively for artists. Yah-Leng finds a lot of meaning in this project because she believes this project helped to break that mindset and kick-start the museum culture in Singapore.
When asked about her most difficult project, Yah-Leng responded by saying "Any project that requires me to balance parenthood and work", with an equal mix of humour and seriousness. She expanded on this by explaining that as a parent, she had much more responsibilites to her family and such had to brainstorm on how to do her work in more efficient ways. She had to find ways to multi-task so that she was not sacrificng time with her children in the name of work.
It was extremely refreshing listening to her interview and made me happy to know that there are such amazing designers from Singapore.
15 April
Today I've managed to narrow down from many ideas to 2. With the first I wanted to kind of play around with the unseen memories that places hold.
I wanted to explore abandoned places and bring back to life the memories that place might have held (based on my imagination).
I intended to use photographs of these places and then overlay onto those drawings with invisible ink which only becomes visible under UV light.
For the second idea, I wanted to explore the idea that despite the many differences we can see between one another on the surface (Race, Religion, Sexuality, Gender etc.), we are still one human race.
We are all connected by the simple human essence within all of us and many unseen things (like our shared love for puppies/kittens). I wanted to bring this forth by using fabrics from different parts of the world and sewing them with just one piece of string, which would also be dipped in invisible ink such that it would only be visible under UV light. This plays on the idea that no matter which part of the world we are from, we are all tied together by the same if we look close enough.
After discussing with my coursemates and Indra, I decided that the second idea would be a better, more interesting one. Additionally, it is also a much more meaningful idea for me because it resonates with my personal sentiments. And so, I did some research and found some inspiration.
Initially, I had wanted to make a big rectangle made of squares of various fabrics but after seeing these fabric maps, I want to use more organic shapes as I think it makes the piece more interesting. It would also make it easier to portray how each "person" is different. I am very excited for this project and exciting to try my hand at sewing. I am only worried about whether I can find enough diverse fabrics.
22 April
We were tasked to go on a walk to places we wouldn't normally think of going. Since I had only recently moved to my new place in Alt-Saarbruecken, it was also the perfect opportunity to explore the random streets around my place a bit more. I saw many interesting things, like a cemetery, prison and what seemed to be the posh housing area of Saarbruecken. However the most interesting thing I found was an incredibly cute message left by little Matti (I'm guessing).
First of all, I'm sorry for the horrible lighting in the photos. I had taken this walk a bit later in the evening and it ended up being a long walk. Anyway, it might not be very clear but those adorable scribbles were saying "Achtung, hier spielt Matti". I can't quite describe why I was so amused by this makeshift warning sign but it brought about some lighthearted joy when I saw it.
28 April
This afternoon as I was getting ready for class, another idea came to mind right(pun intended you'll see why later) as I was putting on my watch. One that felt stronger and even more personal than the last. I am right-handed. Right-handed people usually wear their watches on their left hand. But I wear it on my right hand (and there it is!). And it brought me back to when I first started doing it.
My highschool best friend (I was 13 or 14 at this point) used to wear his watch on his right hand. I found him cool, both generally and for "defying" the norm by not wearing his watch on the left hand. So I did the same to be more like him. I only realized much later that he was just left-handed and so he wore it on his non-dominant hand (I know, I'm a lil slow).
This made me think about all the other characteristics I carry with me that was influenced by people I've met and talked to and how cool it would be to bring visibility to that. From an external perspective, people would simply assume these are solely my characteristics but some of these characteristics have some very interesting stories behind them.
I have to brainstorm a lil bit more on how exactly I can express this artistically. My initial idea is to make some sort of interactive digital piece where people can click on elements on the page and get little snippets of each trait but I find this kind of boring to be honest so I'm going to keep brainstorming.
Paste up workshop
We had to think of ideas that we could do paste ups with and while I wanted to explore the idea that I just got in the morning, it was too complex for the timeframe. I was super amazed by the works of my coursemates and even took one of them back to hang on my wall (Thank you Johanna!).
Given the time constriant, I decided to work together with Shehry on his idea which was to bring forth the people we "see" everyday but not really. Like bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria helpers etc. He already had a cool foundation for the idea using the words "Danke" and "Wer".
He basically wanted people to actually think about who they were thanking. What are their lives like? Do we even know their names? And so, to expand on this, I suggested including images of these underapprecaited, unseen people inside the "Wer" to get people who see the post up to actually think more when they see the underappreciated workers the next time.
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We were pretty satisfied with this at this point and were ready to print and paste it up.
29 April
We were doing our final reviews before printing and getting ready to paste them up. That is when Indra advised us on a few things that felt out of place or might not have the intended effect. For instance, the font itself felt very impersonal and the fact that they were in all caps felt very aggressive. Additionally, the images in the "wer" would not be apparent enough to bring out our intended message. So we started tweaking the idea and with A LOT of help from Indra, we finally arrived at a better design for the paste up.
This design felt more inviting and subtle, but bringing a lot more attention to "wer" with the colour choice.
We then proceeded to paste these up around the city and HBK (mostly Shehry) and I had a lot of fun "vandalizing" the walls in HBK with these meaningful paste ups.
BBQ Party
After a long and tiring day, we got to unwind a little bit with a BBQ party at the HBK backyard. It was so much fun getting to have conversation with so many people and even play some sports with some new people. This was so different from how things happen in UdS and I was really happy I got to take course like this at HBK.
3 May
I have been thinking a lot about the latest idea I had and have been making a list of all the things that people have left to become a part of me now. I have about 15 things on the list which I will keep unseen for now. I also had a couple of other ideas on how I can showcase this.
The one that I feel strongest about is something like a trait journal where I give little anecdotes along with drawings amongst other things. With this I can also play around with the visibility of different components. Maybe I can have one page with information about the person who influenced me and my favourite memories of them. This page will have certain parts cut out, giving a sneak peak into the next page, which will reveal the pieces of them I carry with me.
Another idea is sort of a "tree", made either out of wire or wooden pieces, where the leaves would be the parts of other people I carry with me. This one, I feel, doesn't play with the seen/unseen concept as much as the former.
I am also questioning whether I should make it entirely personal or make it more general to make it more relatable to people. My aim is to get people to reflect on their own traits and try to identify similar things within themselves which they might not have recognized before.
9 May
After brainstorming and reflecting, I felt most strongly about the Journal idea. I think the personal touch of it will encourage audience to reflect within themselves more than the other ideas.
I found some inspiration for how I'm envisioning the journal too.
The window page style on the first image allows me to play around more with the visibility of the various elements on the page. The second image is just the general aesthetic I'm going for on how I want to play with imagery and words.
11 May
I finally decided on a title for the project: Me, Borrowed
I thought it sounded poetic and intriguing :)