This project is my final project of the Master in Interactive Media, at University of the West of England, Bristol.
It is about stories of nomads, people that are constantly moving and leaving things behind. It is a collection of stories by people from and in different parts of the world who wrote about what they have ever left behind.
I’m trying to show and communicate in this project that not only people who move from place to place should be seen as nomads, but we all should see ourselves as nomads, as foreigners, as we do not have roots and we are not attached to any land, and we are in constant movement, no matter if it is by moving from place to place or just because time goes by. Therefore we are all moving forward and leaving things behind.
“(…) The foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. (…) The foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arise, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unnameable to bonds and communities.” (Kristeva, Stranger to Ourselves, 1941, p 1)
My aim in this project is to focus on individuals rather than their nationalities and to break national borders. To see people not by where they come from, but as another human being.
To achieve that, I sent notebooks abroad to people in different parts of the world with the question “What have you left behind?” and asked them to fill in a page and pass the notebook to another person. After one month, I collected about 130 testimonies from people from different countries, from different social, cultural and educational backgrounds.
After collecting the data, I developed a website to present this content I’ve received, and also to try to communicate my point of view.
What have you left behind? - story of nomads by nomads
www.whathaveyouleftbehind.com
22 January 2009
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Mariana: I wager that, amongst all the people you sent your notebooks to, I may have lived the most nomadic lifestyle of anyone. I'm 29, a mongrel American male, and my parents were in the military. Before I graduated high school on my 18th birthday, I'd changed physical addresses 12 times. I went to 10 different schools (including 3 separate high schools) and usually not in the same state, sometimes not even in the same country. As an adult, I chose the military myself and continued my nomadic existence, moving to 3 other states over 7 years. Some of the locations I've been fortunate enough to find myself: Florida, Italy, Minnesota, Sicily (still Italy), Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, North Carolina, Qatar, Iraq, and Texas. As an adult, I now find that I have extreme difficulty forming an emotional attachment to anything (although I'm very nostalgic) and I've discarded or "left behind" many things, too many to count. Your project sounds incredibly interesting and I'd love to help you, if my background lends to your study. If you've already received too many stories to consider, I wish you the best of luck in obtaining your MA. If you'd like to start a dialogue, my email is:
ReplyDeletewesley.boggs@hotmail.com
Thank you so much, good luck, and I look forward to your blog updates.