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.

MY IMAGINARY HONG KONG

Seven and eight years ago I visited Paris and London for the first time in my life.

In Paris I saw a Chinese New Year’s Parade. To me, it was  fascinating. Their complex costumes, dragon kites and the pride they took in their tradition really touched me. While watching the parade, I felt like slipping into another world, which resembles a fairytale where people are gracious, wear bewitched costumes and unusual, but beautiful, makeup.

My first trip to London was dominated by one area called China Town. My mom and I were so fascinated by all the things we saw there. Stores with ducks hanging in front of the windows, Hello Kitty candy everywhere, which was rare to find in Switzerland, hairdressers doing only special Chinese haircuts, apples so red and shiny, how we’ve never seen them before, food so healthy and tasty, no matter how much we were eating of it, we never felt sick or tired of it and in the whole of China Town we were surrounded my Chinese lanterns.

That was my first real encounter with Chinese culture.


 

My Hong Kong Poem:

I imagine Hong Kong like a city where modernity and tradition meet.

Maybe like New York, a City which never sleeps.

Water is little and rice is rich

People are rushing, no one sits

 

Street lights follow  wherever you go

A pulsating vibe surrounds you and you feel the glow

Healthiness which brings the tradition is an invisible law

People scared wearing masks to protect it all