A list of resources and projects that directly inspire me for this project:
(this list will be eventually updated)
Graphic Novels
• Persepolis *especially
A graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian graphic designer, which tells her experience in Iran in times of rebellions and war. According to an interview with her, the aim of her book was to make people realise that anyone could be that person. Showing that the girl in Iran has dreams, fears, etc, just as other girls around the globe. It makes it more human, in a world full of wars in every side.
[read about what influenced me in this]
• Maus, by Art Spiegelman
A graphic novel that tells the story of Spiegelman's father and his life during the Second World War as a Jew in Poland. Spielgelman represents the characters as animals: Jews are represented by mice, the Germans by cats, the Poles by pigs, the Americans by dogs, etc.
• The Rabbi's Cat, by Joann Sfar
The story is told by a rabbi’s cat that, by swallowing a parrot, can speak and wants to convert to Jew. It questions be beliefs of the religion. The rabbi, his daughter and the cat go from Algeria (where they come from) to Paris and encounter the differences of the other country.
[read about what influenced me in this]
• The Arrival, by Shaun Tan
A graphic novel just with images (no dialogs at all) about a man who leaves his family (wife and child) to go abroad. Beautiful drawings and each scene is very well done.
Other Books
• Colour Notebook: Violence, by Fabrica
A collection of notebooks that was given for people from different parts of the world for them to write and draw whatever they wanted in them.
“As Colors says, they are ‘Thousands of people like you, yet different from you.’ A kaleidoscope of faces, temperaments, history and culture.” (Robert Ménard in ColorsNotebook)
[read about what influenced me in this]
• 1000 Journals Project
An experiment that a thousand of blank journals were unleashed into different parts of the world for people to put their thoughts and creativity and return the journal.
• PostSecret, by Frank Warren
An ongoing art project in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of the home-made postcard and send it to Postsecret.
• You are here: Personal Geographies and other maps of the Imagination. By Katharine Harmon
Good image resource for seeing different experiments on maps.
[see my book shelf]
Essays
• "Toccata and the fugue for the foreigner" from the book "Strangers to ourselves" by Julia Kristeva. *especially
[read about what influenced me in this]
• "Lecture on Nothing" from Silence, lectures and writings p.111 - fourth part, by John Cage
[read about what influenced me in this]
Music
• Gabriel o Pensador
A Brazilian artist and rapper which lyrics are about social concerns.
Websites
• Iced Game
An online game by Break Through, a human right organization, about U.S. immigration. The aim of this project was to make people aware of the problems and difficulties with immigrants in US.
• Strange Maps
Blog showing different kinds of maps made by people.
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
[see my favorites websites]
Movies
• Edifício Master, by Eduardo Coutinho
A Brazilian documentary by Eduardo Coutinho. The movie shows story of different people who lives in a big residential building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Stories of "normal people" of low middle class put in a very human way.
• Paris Je T’aime: Quais de Seine, by Gurinder Chadha
A short movie that shows a Parisian boy falling in love with a Muslim woman.
[see the movies I watch]
[see other cultural input]
28 October 2008
27 October 2008
Julia Kristeva: "Toccata and Fugue for a Foreigner"
The essay “Toccata and Fugue for a Foreigner” is part of the book “Strangers to ourselves” (1991) by Julia Kristeva, who is a French (immigrant from Bulgaria) philosopher, literary critic, and psychoanalyst.
In this essay, Kristeva points out that the Foreigner is a “hidden face of our identity” and that we should all see ourselves as immigrants – foreigners – in the society and ponders whether one can live with the other on a global scale ‘without levelling’.
She describes what is to be a foreigner, the difficulties, the solitudes and the situations they encounter as being the "other". Plus, she describes the "grey zone", which is when the foreigner no longer belongs to their country nor the new land. "The foreigner belongs nowhere.”
Taking as example what Marjane Satrapi tells about her own experience when she left Iran and went to live in Austria:
“(…) a problem when you go to another culture and you absolutely want to adapt yourself, and you absolutely want to be integrated. (…) You have to take out the first one [culture], and then choose what you want from the two and swallow them again. But it’s the moment you look at everything that it’s this lack of identity. You don’t know anymore who you are. (…) You are a foreigner anywhere.”
In the essay, the foreigner is so well described and so straight forward that I, as a foreigner, found at some points a bit hard to read and see a reflection of me there.
Highlights:
“The foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arise, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities.” (p. 1)
“Indifference is the foreigner’s shield.” (p.7)
“The space of the foreigner is a moving train, a plane in flight, the very transition that precludes stopping.” (p.8)
“(…) nothing binds them here. Always elsewhere, the foreigner belongs nowhere.”
"Occasionally, raising the eyebrows or saying 'I beg your pardon?' in quick succession lead you to understand that you will 'never be part of it'" (p.15)
Nowadays, I believe that more and more people are in the same situation as mentioned in the essay. People are having living experiences in other cultures much more then in earlier years and therefore encountering the same feelings as the foreigner described in this essay.
If, as Kristeva says, we should all see ourselves as foreigners, we also should see everyone as individuals. Different individuals but who share the same feelings. We should not label anyone by where they come from. In mixed cultures this label no longer has meaning, but it just create stereotypes that doesn’t apply to anyone.
In this essay, Kristeva points out that the Foreigner is a “hidden face of our identity” and that we should all see ourselves as immigrants – foreigners – in the society and ponders whether one can live with the other on a global scale ‘without levelling’.
She describes what is to be a foreigner, the difficulties, the solitudes and the situations they encounter as being the "other". Plus, she describes the "grey zone", which is when the foreigner no longer belongs to their country nor the new land. "The foreigner belongs nowhere.”
Taking as example what Marjane Satrapi tells about her own experience when she left Iran and went to live in Austria:
“(…) a problem when you go to another culture and you absolutely want to adapt yourself, and you absolutely want to be integrated. (…) You have to take out the first one [culture], and then choose what you want from the two and swallow them again. But it’s the moment you look at everything that it’s this lack of identity. You don’t know anymore who you are. (…) You are a foreigner anywhere.”
In the essay, the foreigner is so well described and so straight forward that I, as a foreigner, found at some points a bit hard to read and see a reflection of me there.
Highlights:
“The foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arise, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities.” (p. 1)
“Indifference is the foreigner’s shield.” (p.7)
“The space of the foreigner is a moving train, a plane in flight, the very transition that precludes stopping.” (p.8)
“(…) nothing binds them here. Always elsewhere, the foreigner belongs nowhere.”
"Occasionally, raising the eyebrows or saying 'I beg your pardon?' in quick succession lead you to understand that you will 'never be part of it'" (p.15)
Nowadays, I believe that more and more people are in the same situation as mentioned in the essay. People are having living experiences in other cultures much more then in earlier years and therefore encountering the same feelings as the foreigner described in this essay.
If, as Kristeva says, we should all see ourselves as foreigners, we also should see everyone as individuals. Different individuals but who share the same feelings. We should not label anyone by where they come from. In mixed cultures this label no longer has meaning, but it just create stereotypes that doesn’t apply to anyone.
26 October 2008
The Rabbi's Cat, by Joann Sfar
The Rabbi's Cat is another graphic novel (as Maus) that was one that influenced Marjane Satrapi and I got interested o read for this project.
The story is told by a rabbi’s cat that, by swallowing a parrot, can speak and wants to convert to Jew. It questions be beliefs of the religion. The rabbi, his daughter and the cat go from Algeria (where they come from) to Paris and encounter the differences.
It is very interesting and funny (the cat is very nasty sometimes).
My highlights:
“Western thought is a prehensile, predatory and in the final analysis destructive machine (…). It put names to things, labels, as if to say ‘theses things are part of my system, I have understood them.’” (Rabbi’s dialog, p.25)
“But the time you’ve finished naming a thing, it has already changed and the name you gave it no longer defines it exactly, so you end up with empty words in your mouth.” (Rabbi’s dialog, p.25)
[Link to the book]
The story is told by a rabbi’s cat that, by swallowing a parrot, can speak and wants to convert to Jew. It questions be beliefs of the religion. The rabbi, his daughter and the cat go from Algeria (where they come from) to Paris and encounter the differences.
It is very interesting and funny (the cat is very nasty sometimes).
My highlights:
“Western thought is a prehensile, predatory and in the final analysis destructive machine (…). It put names to things, labels, as if to say ‘theses things are part of my system, I have understood them.’” (Rabbi’s dialog, p.25)
“But the time you’ve finished naming a thing, it has already changed and the name you gave it no longer defines it exactly, so you end up with empty words in your mouth.” (Rabbi’s dialog, p.25)
[Link to the book]
25 October 2008
John Cage: "Lecture of Nothing"
Cage, John, "Lecture of Nothing" in "Lecturers and Writings", 1959, p.110I highlight the parts:
"Or you may leave it forever and never return to it for we possess nothing"
"But actually, unlike the snail we carry our homes within us, which enables us to fly or to stay, to enjoy each."
John Cage is composer and definitely a nomad.
From this I think it might become more interesting if I put my content a bit more poetic, rather than elicit content.
24 October 2008
Marjane Satrapi: "Persepolis"
My first step for developing the new project proposal is to analyse what most interest me in the projects that inspire me and from that I can form my aims for this project.
Lets start with Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, because it’s the project that most inspires me when I see the movie, read the book, read some interviews and even when I listen the soundtrack of the movie.
First of all, it inspired me to think: “I can do something too that can change peoples mind”
Aspects that I got interested:
• The fact that she is a person who left her country to lived in another country (I identified with).
• The way she tells about her experience in a very human way.
• Expression of political (or better: humanist) concern through art (graphic novel). It’s the same thing why I like Gabriel o Pensador: Political concern expressed through music.
• Expression of their own experience in their culture. Showing their culture “to others” by their point of view. “The book I wrote for the other ones, not for Iranians.” (Marjane Satrapi).
• The simple everyday life facts that make it near to the reader. I always like everyday life, simple and ordinary things because it is what makes our life anyway. In many small things is what makes the whole. Like Sérgio Godinho, a Portuguese poet and singer, wrote and Gabriel o Pensador sings in one of his songs: “life is made of small nothings” (“a vida é coisa de pequenos nadas”). Ordinary things make life. What is ordinary for ones can be different for others, what is interesting. And what is ordinary for both creates empathy.
I watched and read some interviews with Marjane, and I highlight some points:
“ The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.” “Nowadays they talk about the Christians and the Muslims as if all Christians were one person and all the Muslims were one person. There is nothing in common, for example, between me and a fanatic of my country. There is nothing in common between a liberal person here and the government of George Bush, yet they are both in the same country. But there are a lot of resemblances between the fanatics of my country and the government here. ”
• “We are never very convinced about the things we know, but we are much more convinced about things we know nothing about.” – in my opinion, this is the moment when we create stereotypes.
The goal of Persepolis was to make people identify with the main character and feel that she is just human being like themselves. Her human concerns are evident in all the interviews of Persepolis. “I’m doing a humanistic movie (…) I’m putting human beings in the centre of interest.”
The motive why Marjane made an illustration movie instead of live action is to make people relate to it:
“If we had done this movie in live-action, as soon as you put a live human being in a geographical place with certain type of people, etc, then again that will become people that are far from us, that we can’t relate to them, they are not like us. It is something very abstract in the drawing that anybody can relate to. That’s why in the background we didn’t make anything exotic. In the background it can be Iran, but it can be any big city anywhere.”
Links to some interviews:
http://culturepulp.typepad.com/culturepulp/2008/01/the-culturepulp.html
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2004_10_003261.php
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aMwfzqEqVLk
Lets start with Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, because it’s the project that most inspires me when I see the movie, read the book, read some interviews and even when I listen the soundtrack of the movie.
First of all, it inspired me to think: “I can do something too that can change peoples mind”
Aspects that I got interested:
• The fact that she is a person who left her country to lived in another country (I identified with).
• The way she tells about her experience in a very human way.
• Expression of political (or better: humanist) concern through art (graphic novel). It’s the same thing why I like Gabriel o Pensador: Political concern expressed through music.
• Expression of their own experience in their culture. Showing their culture “to others” by their point of view. “The book I wrote for the other ones, not for Iranians.” (Marjane Satrapi).
• The simple everyday life facts that make it near to the reader. I always like everyday life, simple and ordinary things because it is what makes our life anyway. In many small things is what makes the whole. Like Sérgio Godinho, a Portuguese poet and singer, wrote and Gabriel o Pensador sings in one of his songs: “life is made of small nothings” (“a vida é coisa de pequenos nadas”). Ordinary things make life. What is ordinary for ones can be different for others, what is interesting. And what is ordinary for both creates empathy.
I watched and read some interviews with Marjane, and I highlight some points:
“ The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.” “Nowadays they talk about the Christians and the Muslims as if all Christians were one person and all the Muslims were one person. There is nothing in common, for example, between me and a fanatic of my country. There is nothing in common between a liberal person here and the government of George Bush, yet they are both in the same country. But there are a lot of resemblances between the fanatics of my country and the government here. ”
• “We are never very convinced about the things we know, but we are much more convinced about things we know nothing about.” – in my opinion, this is the moment when we create stereotypes.
The goal of Persepolis was to make people identify with the main character and feel that she is just human being like themselves. Her human concerns are evident in all the interviews of Persepolis. “I’m doing a humanistic movie (…) I’m putting human beings in the centre of interest.”
The motive why Marjane made an illustration movie instead of live action is to make people relate to it:
“If we had done this movie in live-action, as soon as you put a live human being in a geographical place with certain type of people, etc, then again that will become people that are far from us, that we can’t relate to them, they are not like us. It is something very abstract in the drawing that anybody can relate to. That’s why in the background we didn’t make anything exotic. In the background it can be Iran, but it can be any big city anywhere.”
Links to some interviews:
http://culturepulp.typepad.com/culturepulp/2008/01/the-culturepulp.html
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2004_10_003261.php
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aMwfzqEqVLk
23 October 2008
ColorsNotebook: Violence, by Fabrica
An analysis of what inspires me in this book: "ColorsNotebook: Violence" by Fabrica (2008).
"The work of Colors is to see how globalization is affecting cultural diversity and changing the world." (p.4)
ColorsNotebook: Violence is a book that brings together images about violence made by people from all around the world.
Colors has sent blank notebooks throughout the world and asked people to write and draw whatever they wanted in them. "Thousands of people like you, yet different from you. A kaleidoscope of faces, temperaments, history and culture". (p.8) Then, they selected 33, which were examples of the diversity.
"They come from France, USA, Hong Kong, Uganda, Brazil, South Africa and elsewhere. They are the work of children, writers, designers, homeless people. They are the image of our world, in the local and global perspective, so particular yet so universal. In short, they remeble us." (p.9)
What most interest me in this project is the fact that "real" people made the work, instead of a view from other towards them.
It is a selected work. They took the best of the material they had. This is what I want in my project. It is very interesting and has a lot of artistic expression even though it is made by people who are not necessarely in the creative industries and maybe that is why it is so interesting and it has a soul. Come direct from people's heart and experience.
Link for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Colors-Notebook-Violence-Fabrica/dp/376438865X
"The work of Colors is to see how globalization is affecting cultural diversity and changing the world." (p.4)
ColorsNotebook: Violence is a book that brings together images about violence made by people from all around the world.
Colors has sent blank notebooks throughout the world and asked people to write and draw whatever they wanted in them. "Thousands of people like you, yet different from you. A kaleidoscope of faces, temperaments, history and culture". (p.8) Then, they selected 33, which were examples of the diversity.
"They come from France, USA, Hong Kong, Uganda, Brazil, South Africa and elsewhere. They are the work of children, writers, designers, homeless people. They are the image of our world, in the local and global perspective, so particular yet so universal. In short, they remeble us." (p.9)
What most interest me in this project is the fact that "real" people made the work, instead of a view from other towards them.
It is a selected work. They took the best of the material they had. This is what I want in my project. It is very interesting and has a lot of artistic expression even though it is made by people who are not necessarely in the creative industries and maybe that is why it is so interesting and it has a soul. Come direct from people's heart and experience.
Link for the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Colors-Notebook-Violence-Fabrica/dp/376438865X
Feedback
Today people start receiving the notebooks!
I'm very excited to know how it is going to work out. And I would like very much to hear opinions about what they thought about this experience: receiving the notebook, answer that question and about the book itself.
Any comments, thoughts? I'm keen to hear.
I'm very excited to know how it is going to work out. And I would like very much to hear opinions about what they thought about this experience: receiving the notebook, answer that question and about the book itself.
Any comments, thoughts? I'm keen to hear.
22 October 2008
Aim of the project
In this project I want to focus on individuals rather than their nationalities and break cultural stereotypes.
Nowadays, in the globalized world, national borders don’t really define culture.
With the increase of people living abroad and having influences by other cultures, with the media, the Internet, etc, they no more belong entirely to the culture they come from, each one has their own individual experiences that don't necessarily fit in what people know (or think they know) about the other culture.
We can't just label people by their nationality, we can’t create stereotypes of people who comes from the same country as it doesn’t make sense. We all are influenced by other cultures, no matter if we travel abroad or if we have always lived in the same place.
As Marjane Satrapi said in an interview:
“There is nothing in common, for example, between me and a fanatic of my country. There is nothing in common between a liberal person here [in the US] and the government of George Bush, yet they are both in the same country. But there are a lot of resemblances between the fanatics of my country and the government here.” (http://culturepulp.typepad.com/culturepulp/2008/01/the-culturepulp.html)
What I intend with this project is to make people to see other people not by where they come from, but as another human being. To make them see people as different individuals and to put them with more importance than their own nationality. Individuals on focus.
After all, we have no roots. We are all nomads, foreigners in this land.
32 Notebooks abroad
This project is a very intense and short time one (I have just three and a half months to complete it). So, to send the notebooks abroad, I had to count on help of friends, friends of friends and colleagues.
I am very glad I could contact more people in different countries to get part in this project than I was expecting when I decided to send the books abroad (which was one week ago).
The places I'm sending the notebooks, until now, are:
UK
: Bristol
: London
Brazil
: Rio de Janeiro
: Teresópolis, RJ
: Niterói, RJ
: Búzios, RJ
Australia
: Jolimont, WA
China
: Shanghai
Cyprus
: Limassol
Denmark
: Frederiksberg
France
: Paris
: Grenoble
Germany
: Berlin
: Hamburg
: Halle
Italy
: Florence
Portugal
: Lisbon
Russia
(I just got to know that one of the books are traveling from Berlin to Russia! Amazing! Don't know where in Russia yet.)
Switzerland
: Vaud
Taiwan
: Taipei City
The Netherlands
: Amsterdam
USA
: New York
: Valencia, CA
Many thanks for the friends that are receiving the notebooks in these countries and for the ones who put me in contact with other friends.
I am very glad I could contact more people in different countries to get part in this project than I was expecting when I decided to send the books abroad (which was one week ago).
The places I'm sending the notebooks, until now, are:
UK
: Bristol
: London
Brazil
: Rio de Janeiro
: Teresópolis, RJ
: Niterói, RJ
: Búzios, RJ
Australia
: Jolimont, WA
China
: Shanghai
Cyprus
: Limassol
Denmark
: Frederiksberg
France
: Paris
: Grenoble
Germany
: Berlin
: Hamburg
: Halle
Italy
: Florence
Portugal
: Lisbon
Russia
(I just got to know that one of the books are traveling from Berlin to Russia! Amazing! Don't know where in Russia yet.)
Switzerland
: Vaud
Taiwan
: Taipei City
The Netherlands
: Amsterdam
USA
: New York
: Valencia, CA
Many thanks for the friends that are receiving the notebooks in these countries and for the ones who put me in contact with other friends.
20 October 2008
Book-making Marathon
Preparing the books was a marathon of 4 days and 4 nights. I couldn't waste any time. The post would take some time. People would need some time to contribute. The return of the books would take more time.Wednesday, 15th October: I decided that I would send the books in the afternoon in the meeting with my tutor. I came up with the idea that I could send notebooks instead of interviewing people in the university or sending leaflets. When my tutor agreed that it would be a good idea, but that I should be aware time, I started to become very excited about it. I am always really interested in projects that is applied for different kinds of media (intermediality) and especially with such a tactile aspect.
I came home with the thought of "I am going to buy the books now, I will make everything tonight and I will send all tomorrow". These impossible logistics that comes in my mind when I am very excited about something. Shops were all closed already, I should get the addresses first, and preparing the notebooks takes time. I think I got that when I finished this marathon.
I arrived home and planned how the notebook should look like [see characteristics of the books]. I decided to buy notebooks because I wouldn't have time to make them, I mean, to put the papers and stitch one by one, plus writing, etc. I should send them as soon as possible (on Saturday, at the most, I should send the ones that are to the farest countries (which it would take 1 week to arrive).
Thursday, 16th November: In the next morning I went to some stationary and department stores to find the notebook I had in mind: few plain pages, covered with Kraft natural color, no art on that. In one small stationary I found this a Hahnemuhle journal, just perfect to match the characteristics I was looking for. The shop had just one. No more. Hmmm... dam it. Never the less I bought it "if I have this in my hands I can find a seller for that". I came direct to the Internet and finally found a website that sell this German notebook here in England but it would take 4 working day. Whaaa? No way! I called the company. Arranged for them to deliver by the next morning before 12pm. Phew!
I bought the ribbons I would use, the envelopes, and what I could to optimize the time. In this night I made tests in the notebook I had in my hands and cutted all the 600 small papers that I would use for the "Thank you for taking part in this project" that would be attached to the books. It took me some time but I finished at 7am.
Friday, 17th November: At 10am at the next morning (or: at the same mor
ning) the notebooks arrived. Yes, as soon as I saw that they were the right notebooks and everything was right, I came back to sleep which didn't took long for me to get back in the marathon again at 12pm.And then it actually started. Notebooks, notebooks, notebooks. Cut the ribbons in the same size. Glue the ribbons in each notebook. Take the first notebook that is already dry and write the title in the cover. Next notebook.
Another. Another... Take the first notebook that the ink had dried and write the website address at the back. One, two, three, thirty-two. Take the first notebook again, open that and write "What have you left behind?" in the second page (in the first it will be a text). Do that in all the notebooks and leave them open so the ink dries, otherwise it will mark. Make sure you are changing position of the sentences in each page. Make that in thirty-two notebooks in thirty-nine pages. Oh, that is 1248 times "What have you left behind?".Stamp the small papers. My flatmate now and then arrived in the messy living room and laughed at me. She thought it was hilarious the scene. She was the one who took the pictures.
Now, writing the instructions in the back of the cover at least in the books I would post the next day. Write the text in the first page with what I have left behind. Take an envelope, put the address of return, fold and put at the back of the book.
Put in the envelopes. And done. Phew.
Saturday, 18th November: Went literally running to the post before it closes and sent some notebooks. The other notebooks were sent on Monday and a few during the week, as soon as I got the addresses.
I am sure I will have a few more marathons until the end of this project. And I can't wait to that.
10 October 2008
About me
I'm Mariana Mota. I'm a Master in Interactive Media (University of the West of England, Bristol - 2009) and graphic designer (PUC-Rio, 2005).I am Brazilian and in my life I left many things behind, as we all did.
My main interests are Design, Art, Culture and Media studies. I am very interested in projects that has cultural issues as the main goal, using art forms to express cultural/social/human issues. [see my influences for this project]
I am fascinated by tactile and "real" projects and using the New Media as a platform for communicate, interact and exchange.
After the MA I am interested in continue studies doing a PhD in theses subjects of interest. Also, I am interested in having some work experience in the UK (I have just got my Post-study visa which allows me to live and work for the next 2 years. So, I'll be around Bristol at least in the next couple of years!;)
For more information about me and my work, please, visit the website www.marianamota.com
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