Cultural Diversity
Sara Biatchinyi
practice initial ideas:
mending:
- literal & metaphorical
- the mending project (lee mingwei)
- damage as an opportuintiy of turning it into a more positive light
- invisible mending: hiding
- visible mending: showing and recreating a physical wound (or emotional)
- embracing flaws and the imperfect
- AIDS memorial quilt
Disconnections & ruptures:
- rational/emotional/irrational
- public/private
- abstration/lived experience
- how can we stitch these false divisions together? (alongside and as important as each other)
- immigrant aesthetics:
- what is our concept of beauty?
- eurocentric values
- influenced by environment policing & judging what beauty isn't
Mending Assignment:
- mending gestures: imaging possibilities
- longer political structures: ways of stitching reflective time
1. What rupture do I want to mend?
- new possibilities or new ways
- zine, poem, poster, open form
i) literal OR ii) metaphorical
ii) metaphorical
- how & why did it rupture? what kind of rupture? what kind of reconnection do you want to nurture?
IDEAS:
- relationship with myself
- relationship with education
- relationship with communication
2. Document mending gesture:
1-2 min video
3. Use hotglue as personal log
MIND MAP OF IDEA:
my relationship with communication (towards myself and others)
metaphorical mending
how I communicate with myself and my surroundings (people specifically)
mending approach: working towards a more positive way of approaching and discussing things w/ myself
what is vulnerability?
"we live in the moment"
Why do I ignore things?
Are there patterns?
PATTERNS OF THOUGHT
This but x3000
Love Letter to Myself
how can I incorporate PATTERNS OF THOUGHT and a Love Letter to Myself?
DEVELOPING STAGE 1:
What is my mending gesture?
zine concept:
- video and a zine that communicate with each other
how can they communicate with each other?
- self-exploration
- 2/3 ways of making a video (video essay, music video, commercial, etc.)
2 ways I will explore for the video:
- video essay
- music video
What am I mending? (ideas + concepts)
- code-switching
how can this relate?
- a digital zine
what will be the content?
- a collection of how I communicate:
- voice notes,
- messages,
- videos,
- music,
- photos
zine concept: a giant mind map / "mental vomit" of how I think; organized to follow a certain pattern or concept:
- maybe organized by mood or person I talk to?
DEVELOPING STAGE 2:
Mending Gesture developed:
A zine dedicated to me about my relationship with my identity and how it affects my communication.
- a kind of personal journal with thoughts, experiences, and photographs of my upbringing that make me reflect on why communication is impacted by my identity.
How do my identity and my communication correlate?
- I grew up in several countries
- I speak 2 languages as my mother tongue (+2 more)
- I am half Italian and half Congolese but grew up with my Italian side of the family
- I have lived in Africa for half of my life
- I've always been surrounded by contrasting cultures
How does this affect my communication?
- I am more shy and passive when it comes to sticking up for what I believe in
- Because of being surrounded by contrasting cultures, I feel like it's not my place to complain about things I find unfair
- I can "act" according to who I am around
- I code-switch often, which leads me to lose parts of my personality in hopes to be able to fit in
DEVELOPING STAGE 3:
How can my mending gesture represent this communication link?
To begin researching how I portray this mending gesture, I also need to understand the root of my problems with my identity and where they could potentially stem from.
For the purpose of this project, I don't have enough time or mental strength to go into it incredibly deep, but I can find some important key points in my upbringing which made me reflect on how I viewed myself in society and therefore affected the way I communicate with others.
The video on the right is based on an experiment done in the 1940s in the US exploring the impacts of segregated schools. This is a remake of this experiment but with Italian children. While watching this video, I could see myself in the children's place, because I have felt the same growing up. As a young child, this does impact how you view yourself and where you place yourself. Will you be more outwardly confident because you need to prove that you have every right to fit in? Will you try to assimilate with the society around as best as you can so you don't stand out?
How the media impacts identity:
Representation in the media is incredibly important to how children view themselves. Seeing people that look like you achieve great things can help aspire children to what to achieve the same. Here's a look at the type of media I consumed when I was younger:
Representation does matter in the media. It makes you think about what you can achieve and where you're placed in society. The older I got, the more exciting it was that I saw more people that looked like me in the media, but nonetheless it was a harder battle. My whole life I knew I had to work twice as hard as my counterparts (times three considering I'm a woman), to achieve what others have. This is something that has been taught to me since I was little.
Diversity & Inclusion in my academic career:
How has my education impacted the way I communicate and my relationship with my academic career?
My younger brother and I have always been fortunate enough to attend international schools growing up. Where the given benefit is that you're surrounded by a mixture of cultures and ethnicities, and you receive a more global approach in your learning.
This of course didn't take away from the fact that it was a majority ex-pat environment (ex-pats + the 10% of each country that could afford such high school fees). So the environment usually ended up being quite elitist and, quite frankly not as diverse as you'd assume.
This led to my brother and I both being "poster children" for diversity in our school in Chile, for example. He was the cover of the new mission plan, while I was interviewed for the school's promotional video (not to mention they completely butchered my name and although I complained, they have not fixed it till this day.)
During this quarantine, I started reading an important book: Taking Up Space. A manifesto discussing the importance of black women taking spaces in educational environments. This is something that I had never considered previously, how my education has also impacted the way that I speak about certain issues. I have always learned about white artists, historians, politicians, etc. Seldom have I heard about POC artists for example (and this has continued into my university career). How does this impact me as an artist?
DEVELOPING STAGE 4:
What ways can I mend this relationship?
- focus on metaphorical mending
My mending gestures are all about self-discovery. In order to achieve this, I want to do things that generally might make me uncomfortable.
my mending to-do list:
- write a letter to that person that you know you need to talk to
- be more vocal about the current situation in the US and in Europe
- attend a protest
- Bring up conversations about white privilege with your white friends
- go for a walk by yourself
DEVELOPING THE MENDING GESTURE:
Zine: a sort of diary to myself
- it will include photographs and sentences or phrases I have been asked, or that I have said in relation to my identity.
My thought process when people ask me certain questions.
here is the video encompassing what my mending gesture is and the significance of it.
here is the pdf of the zine!