Visiting Phase

Dear all
We guess you are exchanging images, working on your common projects. The visiting phase is approaching very quickly (less than 2 weeks until the first HK students will get on the plane) and so it is crucial that you make the best use of the remaining time.
We don’t see too much of activities on the blog. We hope it is because you are busy working on your goals for our project. As the name of the project says, the key idea is to deal with imaginations and images of our two main locations Switzerland and Hong Kong.
You and your projects will gain most from the time on location (Hong Kong and Zürich) if you engage mentally and affectively – with the other place before you are there. You only have once the chance to confront your notions and ideas of the other place with first-time real, bodily perception on spot.
So whatever you are working on, make sure that you integrate somehow your imagination of the other place (drawings, images you received from your remote partner or researched them and appropriated them for your project).
To discover the other place will be a much richer experience if you dealt with it before with imagination, stereotypes, images, shortly our own images of the remote locations. To confront your imaginations with the experience on the spot is the main reason we are visiting each other.
If you have questions, if you need inputs, support, feedback, please contact us. We will be glad to help (if we can). We wish you all inspiration and motivation. Make the best of the remaining time. And we look forward to be hosts and guests.
Best and happy new year (soon for you in Hongkong as well)
Thomas and Birk

 

Zurich / cages

The promised city, dipped in an admirable countenance,

Where gold is hidden behind gracious walls,

and strangers pilger in hope to find it

Aflamed by the idea of an carefree existence,

an existence based on the shine of gold

To reach it, demands a prize so high, noone could ever know

The reward served on a golden plate

in shape of a blazing blindness,

makes us believe to have found the answer

to all our oppressive problems

Fresh bruises seem to disappear on our used up wrists

But the sharp pain stays and drifts through the sizzling surface

Team Allison & Morena

TAXI DRIVER

When you go to a new place, there is an expectation about the extraordinary. There are expectations about the new. If the new is ordinary, how are we dealing with our expectations?

The project is about the interactions between the cities, the taxi drivers and a fictional character. To decrease expectations about the new, but let the way guide us through the new. Is not about creating a new location, but giving yourself to discover a new place throught a third person. in this case, the Taxi Driver.

It aims to create a situation where destination is not anymore important in a taxi. It shows the portrait of a city through a taxi driver’s point of view, in Hong Kong and in Zurich, in which we will see the differences. We want to capture things that can be unexpected or ordinary. How different are the places they want to go? How will the process differ?

Through this project, we will explore the diversity and similarity of the cities not only through the taxi but being guided by the taxi drivers. Who are they, where they come from, what kind of stories do they tell us about the locations and about themselves.

Team – Winnie & Jo

Medial cure of souls

The global interface of culture (western and eastern world)

Getting close: Sharing is Carrying

Since the“Gutenberg Galaxy“ (How Marshall Mc Luhan described) was yesterday, we live in a global village. A digital era, which effects every living person who is connected to electricity and the post-capitalism and -modern way of live.

So what is interesting about this global digital thing? – Networking allover the planet?

It is the way of changing/mixing ideologies and role-models in a rapid way, to create a new form of identity. A very reflected one.
Which isn’t a national matter anymore. It’s an international mixture of habits, beings and even bodies (how they are dressed, how they move, how they eat, make love etc.).

A common sense was developed which has its roots in the medial world.
Television, Cinema, streaming services (like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, iTunes, Streamcloud, Youtube), Books, comics, Video-Games and so on… they surround us.
We are able to see further than ever,
We are able to hear more than ever,
Taste, smell – even to feel more than ever.

We are getting close to each other – In our imagination.
Being able to comprehend luck and sorrow under the statement: sharing is carrying.

So, what do we want to confer between Hong Kong and Zurich?

Main-interests:
1.The medial habits- this, what is distracting us from (maybe) a stressful working place, harm, Loneliness, boredom… and how similar they are to each other (or if)
2. How it“print’s it’s textures“ in our bodies (Which imprints are left by media world), maybe we can draw conclusions about the seen film scenes later.

Thats why we film little scenes in our environment.
Every Scene has it’s topic (Question), like: This is how rush hour looks like in Zurich.
The other person reflects this Question, with a scene she is filming, and is asking a new „Question“ in the end, for the other person to answer (not in a written way, just filmic).
It should draw us conclusions about, if we can read and understand the Question in Pictures of one another .
This should last three weeks, like:

First Scene Person A : (Q= Question)Q1, First Scene Person B: (A=Answer)A1 +Q2
Second Scene Person A: A2 + Q3, Second Scene Person B: A3 + Q4… and so on.

Afterwards we will work with the collected material.

So, another  main-interest I would like to add (J.) is: (next to the comparison of the medial worlds), how the dramaturgy of a little scene is build. How are the cultural influence? Are there Connections? Can we understand and read it.

For Lecturer (little note): The next step is to locate the amount of questions, and of course who wants to start.Retrospectively it should be able to watch the whole work as a little movie.Maybe this Part we could do together there in Hong Kong (optimizing the movie).

:)))

Karen and Jelena’s statement

REFLECTING LOCATIONS: Team Karen and Jelena

The topic of Karen and my work is going to be cages  in our two different cities / societies. It’s going to be a collaboration, where both of us will document cages and try to combine them in a video installation work at the end. These cages can include physical and mental cages. During this process, our aim is to get to the bottom of this subject and try to crystallize the main topic out for us.

For Karen and me, the cage is an interesting symbol because it surrounds, or one could also say, imprisons  somebody / something by putting boundaries in between. There is a difference between the state / reality in the cage and outside the cage.

We are both aware that this is a massive topic, but we believe that we still need time to explore, figure out and process it. We will define a different stage of progression and aims each week. The aim for the end-stage is to compare the different material and conclusions we’ve made during this process and get to a common denominator. One part of the work will also include interviews with people which we will record or write down. Our exchange of ideas and material will be over Skype. It’s very important for us to communicate as much as possible, not only about our main topic, but also to get to know each other and figure  out where our ways could lead us in this project. We also want to achieve a certain kind of comprehension of how the other  person understands cages.

Here an example:

THE GOLDEN CAGE

Karen’s explanation

Golden cage in my explanation means you are framed in a beautiful place and you can look outside and do a lot of things inside the place, but you can’t go outside or escape. It is because you are just caging in that place. The golden cage should be framed the rich men.

Jelena’s explanation

For me a golden cage is when a person is surrounded by materialistic things. In this materialistic point of view, he/she has everything and seems perfectly happy. So the priorities are focused on materialism, but one’s missing the real needs in life, which money can’t afford. These things are outside the cage and need a lot of emotional, mental effort to get.

Maybe someone living in a golden cage mistakes materialism, with the real needs in life and feels, for a certain moment, a kind of fulfillment, which disappears as quickly as a breeze. In my imagination, the person living in the golden cage gets a sort of awareness at some point and realizes to be kept in a golden cage by his own wish.

In the attachment you will see some of the things Karen and I already shared with each other and also how our Skype meetings look like.

Hans’s report

After my discussion with Katarina, we have finalized some main ideas of our work.

Our concept is doing  ‘city similarity’ of Hong Kong and Zurich. We will shoot the footages in our own city separately. Though it is very risky but it is believe that we will find something beyond our imagination in this kind of cooperation.

The definition of ‘city similarity’ is finding the visual similarity of Hong Kong and Zurich. What we would like to discover is not only the similarity of cityscape, people’s behaviour, but also the culture, politic condition and social issue behind what we see and record. Personally it will be amazing to see the non-similarity or similarity in ‘city similarity’.

For me the video sources may not included first-handed footages only, but also the source from broadcasting media too. It is because I believe that people’s culture is strongly affected by media.

Furthermore, We thought about how to present the piece. We got a first rough idea, which is present our work as a video installation. Personally, I prefer use programming to match the footages from Hong Kong and Zurich, then present them in two separated screen. And of course, we are still thinking another way to present. we still discussing about it.

p.s. I’ll start to shoot some footage in the middle of December.

Team Up!

Dear all,

After the 3rd assignment, it is time to pair you up and start the collaboration.
Here you go:
Katarina – Hanz
Morena – Allison
Jelena – Karen
Joanna – Winnie
I believe Thomas and Birk are both open for other possibilities if you have a better idea on the team lineup, and please do let us know by this week for any suggestion or objection.
Phase 4: Finding methods and narratives
1. All of you should be able to find each others’ email address, please develop your own communication channel (Facebook, email, skype, whatsapp….) in order to ensure constant and effective discussion
2. To transform your interests into a small, personal narrative. Please try to come up a consensus with your co-artist, and
3. Based on your discussion, show your partners your research materials and methodology
4. To decide whether it will be one collaborative artwork, or individual under the same context and concept
5. To specify your topic, subject matter, methods, material……
Please submit your project documentation (research material) and a short artist statement / proposition (within 500 words) onto our blog by 30 Nov Monday.

More or less you will share similar idea/ practice with your collaborator, mentors will keep tracking your working process from time to time.

Good luck,
Chung