SCRIPT:
Hello,
This is my interpretation and an expression of OUR experience with MAIP so far. A chronology represented as a Quilt, A tapestry of emotions and lessons. A bond created through our online meetings and our shared impression of what weve done so far. The story of MA intercultural practices
Before we go into my illustrations that symbolize our chronology, I believe it is important to show whose story is represented in this Illustrated Quilt. I have dedicated the surrounding patches to my cohourt, their environment, practise and symbolism for who I have learned them to be as practitioners and people.
I have also assigned each of my cohourt including my self colours. The purpose of this is to provide some clarity later on in the pathes of our chronology. I assigned each a colour that I believe matches my image of them as people instinctively.
Starting off on the left, Is Marsha. Who Is obviously not a fellow student but our guide through this experience that I am attempting to put in order. I have dedicated this illustrated patch to her as she has represented the course values and has led us through the chronology of our experience.
The remaining patches are for my cohourt as forementioned.
A patch dedicated to Yeh nah, assigned the colour orange which I associate with creativity and confidence . her environment and symbols of her practise, the Korean knot – maedup, which has played a large part in our interactions and her trajectory, symbolising my interpretation of her as a symbol. Additionally I have included her pet cat, who has many times been present during our teams meetings, and was a large part of her practice’s process during our collaborative project and item exchange.
Right bellow is the patch I have dedicated to Alia, assigned the colour light blue due to the connection she has expressed to me that she and her lineage have with the sea.
The Symbols of her practise that she herself has communicated to me she feels close to, are traditional emirati culture and architecture. These are things that I associate with her and her practise as an interior designer. Next to the figure that symbolises her, is her pet dog who has been the product of many of our casual discussions and a significant symbol of her environment at home.
Next to Alia is a patch dedicated to fatma. ASSIGNED THE COLOUR PURPPLE. For me it was clear that fatma would get a bright vivid feminine colour like her designs, and purple felt like it encapsulated her maturity as well. With symbols of her practise as a fashion designer and business owner. Her beautiful work and colourfull prints are largely influential in our shared experience in the course, and aren’t only a symbol of her as an artist but as a person also.
Next up I have dedicated a patch to Iris,assigned the colour green. I have looked at what each primary colour symbolises in Chinese culture, and green felt the most close to what iris emits for me. Growth and harmony. I decided to represent her through the symol of a pearl necklace. Iris’s practise is very multifaceted, however I chose the necklace as I believe it doesn’t only represent her jewellery design business. It also represents our connection to eachother, as she had gifted me a similar necklace from her line of work during the intensive. Next to iris I illustrated her cat, Another unnamed cohourt, that we have all seen many times through the windows of our screens during our meetings.
Finally a patch for my self. I assigned myself the colour pink. I took a good look at my surroundings in the room where I usually am during our meetings, and as the space is surrounded by pink, I decided to show that through my patch, to represent my environment. Lastly I used the sea and a boat to symbolise my environment and culture in cyprus which is a huge part of my practise, along with a paintbrush, the tool I use most for my art.
Now that weve established who the chronology is about, we can go ahead and start to stich each window of our experience together, while I explain its importance and symbols.
I have decided to stich each window-patch in chronological order in order to slowly unveil this story in a more coherent way, as well as to show how through an online course we were able to share these valuable experiences together. Each patch for me represents each window that we had to open and look through online using our computers, to see into eachothers lives, have a peek through small parts of our experience and share the rest through communicating and connecting.
The virtual illustrated thread that I will use to show the connection between each patch, represents not only the connectivity of our separate environments, intercuturality and art practices. But it IS also weaved like a thread, to represent the online web.
The web that has made it possible for people living so far away from eachother to be tied together. Brought together to share this intricate experience and chronology.
PATCES TIME
The first window I decided should represent the start of our chronology symbolising our initial meeting, . I have chosen to include it as a sort of introduction to the characters symbolising US. I have decided to give us all abstract shapes in order to make us seem more uniform In the tapestry, while still keeping our essence. the colours that I have assigned to us, point to each of our identities in the outside of the quilt.
I came up with most if these windows not only by thinking back on our interactions but also by observing my blog, and notes as class representative. The second window is just that, a representation of our initial panick when we were told of our first assignment, the interviews and the video explaining our practise. I remember we were all very new to the process of MAIP and struggled with the idea of looking at our own interculturality for that first project.
After that came the preparation for our interviews. I am genuinely very grateful that we were able to talk 1-1 about a topic so easy, ourselves. It gave us the opportunity to get to know eachother better and created a sence of familiarity. I have used the colours that represent alia and my self specifically for this patch, due to the fact that during our interview we bonded and talked so much that it lasted for longer than an hour, and was the start of our community forming deeper roots, based on closeness and us sharing common things we saw in our culture and positionality, even tho we came from such different backgrounds.
The next window in our chrology represents the week that we individually worked on our own projects, while still maintaining contact in our community, both by utilising open studio and our group chat. I gave the figures a bit of a more detailed form as I wanted to show that during that time we were all looking inward. Trying to piece together what made us ourselves, our culture, our practice. And express that through our very first assignment.
With the end of unit 1 came the week of feedback. Sharing our project and expressing joy for each of our effort and unique approach to the brief was something that pushed our bond to develop further and we all felt very proud to see how each of us chose to show themselves and their practise to the world.
Before the start of unit 2, I was still in cyprus were I decided to send the item for our item exchange to yeh nah. I chose the colour blue as a background for this window specifically to represent the same colour that u can see in my patch outside of the chronology, representing cyprus and my culture. Choosing to send yeh nah my grandmothers hand crafted frivolite was super easy. It is something that is very commonly gifted between family in cyprus and something that I was and still am very proud to be able to share with my cohourt.
I chose to utilise the next window in our chronology to show a very realistic representation of what open studio was like for us during that time, transitioning from unit 1 to unit 2, I specifically noted in my blog back then the words ‘confusion’ AND ‘chaos’ very normal reactions as it was the very start of the unit, everyone was panicking about the items they had sent out and we were anticipating instructions of what was to come.
Finally I received my item sent by fatma, Apair of beautiful earrings, a necklace, and a dress , all from her personal fashion brand along with some bakhoor.
I used this window to show how we all received and gave out items, we exchanged part of our selves and culture and practise through this exchange and I tried to symbolise the items themselves.
The next step in our trajectory was MAPPING. We all started to brainstorm and try to pinpoint our own positionality, a way to show the most important checkpoints of our personhood. I used this window to represent that time, and how it felt to search for our selves in a map of our making.
During our weeks of preparing our positionality map and work with our received items there was a common consensus that using miro would’ve been beneficial to all of us, and having the most experience using it, we decided it would help for me to hold space for a sort of tutorial. I had organised the space a bit before hand to make everything more appealing and easy to comprehend, and we all became more accustomed to going on miro to check for updates/ share our interviews through this. I used this window to represent that bonding moment, along with my final positionality map project for unit 2, which I created entirely on miro.
I am using the next window to represent the time I spent sketching out, creating and polishing my final project for this unit, inspired by fatma’s item and practise, therefore I decided to use her colour to symbolise that time in our chronology. I also used flowers as it was the aesthetic that captured me the most from her designs and what I had chosen to go forth with my own project.
For this window I used a particular date in our chronology that might not be particularly associated with any briefs or deadlines that occured, but to me is a very obvious showcase of us exploring our interculturality, and going back on my notes I realised that it was a very memorable open studio for me. the space of open studio was shared, as you can guess by the colours, by fatma alia and myself. I used the evil eye symbol in the very center as it is a symbol we share in our cultures, and it is something that represents what we have in common. I remember our conversation was something that made me see deeper into our cultures and realise how much we share and even how we differ. It was an extremely frtuitful relaxed bonding conversation, entirely of our own accord, encouraged by the spirit of MA IP.
Aafter the submission of our unit 2 projects came the intensive. Although we didn’t all share the same space during this time, we still kept in close contact and I was able to share in real time my experience of our may day exhibition with the rest of the cohourt who couldn’t be there. Iris and I had the priviledge of intereacting with eachother physically, which was incredible and aiding in the creation of the may day exhibition. I decided to subtle symbolise all of this in this window. I illustrated in a different colour, light pink, to represent MAIP and MAPS who collaborated during this time, and used a picture I took of a performance MAPS students held in front of our displays in order to frame what the exhibition looked like. I used the colours that symbolize us, bright pink, purple, orange, blue and green on the flowers surrounding the two figures, to show our contribution and intereaction through the intensive.
With the start of unit 3 we found ourselves looking at facilitating a discussion and holding space for visiting lecturers to talk about their practise, and for students to give feedback. I used this window to show the preparation that we all undertook in order to truly be able to facilitate our individually assigned guest lecturers, the research we did on them and on facilitating it self.
I used this window to visualise my facilitation of lina juverovich in front of our cohourt and visiting students. Visualising us all in the same space even though we were miles apart, only looking at eachother through a screen is a great way to show that by that point, we all felt more comfortable with eachother, and were able to share the space of MAIP with others as well.
, after year 1 came to an end after our submission for unit 3, I used this window to show that I finished year one in a different environment, with more distance from my cohourt- schedule wise. I chose to visualise my self as an onlooker, longing to join back but unable to, being blocked by the parthenon (symbolising Athens) . This is due the fact that right before our transition to summerbreak, I attended the shared campus summer school programe in Athens, and had an extremely intense schedule that caused me to miss our last few meetings together. To me this window still represents our shared chronology, because our open studio sessions and our meetings were something we shared, and the distance created by our summer break (and my summerschool) were felt by everyone involved.
Thankyou so much for weaving our MAIP chronology with me. I HOPE THAT I WAS ABLE TO GIVE YOU A TASTE OF WHAT IT WAS LIKE FOR US ALL, TO EXPERIENCE OUR FIRT YEAR WITH MAIP AS A COMMUNITY.