Museum of London

The museum organizes exhibitions in a chronological order and the way they display artifacts predetermined how we are going to physically navigate through the space- follow the signage and travel through time. However, personally, I found myself was naturally drawn to the artifacts that were the evidence of lives of inhabitants who lived in this space before us. Climate change forced human to move to a more inhabitable place or adapt to the environment by changing the way they live. We alway think that we are the one that manipulates the environment but it is the environment that shapes how we live. Those artifacts are the most vivid evidence of lives revolved around the complex routines of human movement.

The trace of a city is what’s left of it, if it weren’t for the need of urbanization/modernization, lots of artifacts and traces of human activities will still remain buried underground. I recalled the sculpture I made last year while I was in Jingdezhen. The broken shards I found evidenced the history of mass production of porcelain ware in Jingdezhen which defined the city’s identity to the rest of the world. I started to wonder what our section of the museum will look like in the future. What do we have left for archeologist in the future to exam and display in the section that is labeled 2019?

Most of the artifacts that survived time are made of stone, ceramic, metal and glass-materials does not decompose over time or can be easily destroyed by external force. Following that logic, it is not very hard to anticipate what might remain underground from our civilization. Concrete, steel, plastic, rubber and polystyrene foam…

Barbican Center

Brutalist Architecture-what an interesting name. I have never heard about this term before today, however, the moment I saw Barbican, it made sense to me. Exposed concrete structure and geometric design give it a very futuristic look. We started wondering around the barbican complex. Again, I paid extra attention to what breaks my movement and redirect me to a different space. It is quit dark inside the barbican center. The warm and inviting light coming through the window lured me outside to the lakeside terrace. I couldn’t figure out a way to cross to the other side so I decided to take a break on the bench by the lakeside. As I started looking for a way to cross to the other side of the lake, I spotted the stairs on the right hand side. I followed the stairs and entered another plane…

I felt stuck at the idea of the slur database. I was having issues to find ways to unpack all the emotions and messages through a single sheet of compiled information. And I realized that I have been focusing on the slurs this entire time, but slurs are just one type of language that was used to discriminate people. Why not step back and look at language over all and other ways of expression that does the same thing?

It seems like a clever and sneaky way of getting the message out there, but it aim to do the same as racial slurs, to reject, marginalize and discriminate the targeted group. Who else is better than Donald Trump to do just that. So I looked into Donald Trump’s vocabulary, particularly the ones that he used to address the issues at the US-Mexico border. And I found that even though the individual words are not as offensive as racial slurs, but together, they portrait certain pictures and project the same content on the group of people who are targeted and discriminate against.

Since our group manifesto has a focus on education, it made me thought about how we use flash cards to teach children Alphabets and the word we choose to put on the card are the first set of vocabulary they are going to learn and use to describe what they see in this world.

So I started writing down the alphabets and putting words next to the alphabets based on the first letter of the word, like creating a set of flash card. Even though I failed to find words for all the letters, I discovered something very interesting. These word formed certain relations and together they created a narrative that project on a particular group of people. And it is effective how it works and terrifying how well it works. When used with masterful skills, it can be very destructive.

In terms of visualization, I experimented with printmaking. Since the size of the print press set a limitation on how big I can go with the print. I only selected A-E to make a print. I would like to print the whole alphabet on large canvas if I had more time.

Then I just get really sad when I think about if this is the set of vocabulary that we will be teaching our children. And these are the words children at the borders familiar with at the moment. So I decide to create another set of words to counter the negativity from it. And they are meant to respond to one another. Which set of vocabulary do we want our children to learn?

On Friday, our group went to the bookstore in Westfield mall to do some critical research by immersing ourselves in the wonderful world of children’s books. We were looking for some ideas for the interactive learning and communication component of our zine. And we all agree children’s books are a great resource for that.

We want to use our zine as a way to provide education about difference race and culture by giving people opportunities to teach each other about themselves. At the same time, provide a platform to critique the current social and political issues in regards to racial inequality and cultural collision.

We will accept submissions via email and curate the content for each issue base on a variety of themes we choose from each month. We encourage people to share their stories through writings as well as any visual and experimental form. Selected submissions will be included in the envelope within the zine. And we can collect readers response to those letters and forward them to the author if they would like.

I was brainstorming potential names for the zine. I thought Borderless Cafe could be a cool name for it. In our group manifesto, we demand a world without borders and a unified humanity. That idea is the backbone of this zine. So I think Borderless Cafe is a very fitting name for it. The zine is like a cafe, a heart warming, relaxing and inviting place for people who believe the world should be borderless and actively making effort to achieve that goal by share their knowledge and stories on this platform.

In our group manifesto, we demand a better education about all race and ethnicities. However, exposure to different race and ethnicities are just as important. Because what we learn on paper or by word of mouth is still an abstract concept. We need real life encounter to either challenge or confirm what we learnt from the book or other people’s words. Traveling around the world is the best way to get that exposure but not everyone can afford that. People living in culturally diverse places like New York, London and Hong Kong are more acceptive of people with different ethic backgrounds than a small homogeneous community in the middle of the U.S. But not everyone live in those places. Therefore, apart from the zine, I was also thinking about using some sort of social events to bring people together, and the the zine can be a platform to promote those type of events. Like a group cooking class or craft class. Using something we human all do to form the bond regardless of our differences in race and ethnicity.

I did a dumpling making class with a group of friends with very diverse ethnic background. In the process of making, we realized there is a dumpling dish in every culture. Chinese called it Jiaozi, Japanese is Gyoza, Korean is Mandu, Tibetan is Momo, Italian is Ravioli and Spanish is Empanadas and more. That was the moment we all felt so connected to each other and realized that we have more in common that we are different.

Depends on what kind of submissions we got, we might considering to include translations for any submissions that are not in English since we are a zine based in London. Also maybe have a separate issue with kids friendly content—Borderless Cafe junior edition.

When I watched the movie Freedom Fighter, a story about a dedicated teacher (Hilary Swank) in a racially divided Los Angeles school has a class of at-risk teenagers deemed incapable of learning. Instead of giving up, she inspires her students to take an interest in their education and planning their future. She assigns reading material that relates to their lives and encourages them all to keep journals. It is based on a real story and later these journals were published as a book.

I was so moved and inspired by this movie, because it shows how people connect with each other through the stories they share and the feelings and emotions behind it, regardless what language you use or how well you can write. It is the spirit and emotions beyond the form of letters and phrase that truly connect us and help us understand one another.

While I am stilled very interested in the idea with projection. I started to manipulate the video in premiere pro. I was trying to figure out an idea that allows me to present the data but also unpack the information within the database. Simply projecting the list on the wall does not reflect the complexity of the information that contained in the database. What if I just unpack the data from the giant list. Showing each row one by one so it is easier for the viewer to focus on the individual data points but still able to preserve the initial visual shock from the massive and long list after viewing it.

I kept the font small and hard to read because some of the slurs are highly offensive. Viewer does not need to know what it is unless they really try to. Let them stay like abstract data points. Then I will single out some slurs that are commonly know to people and quickly flash the individual word. The entire video will follow the sequence from mass to single line , then to the individual point. So the animation will look like a giant mass turned into a line, then a dot.

Then I realised it does not correctly reflect the direction of the data flow. Slurs are created individually, then circulated within a single loop of community then collectively end up in the big mass. So I decide to reverse the order of the sequence, that way it shows how one dot turned into a giant mass.

Don’t really know how I am gonna animate this yet.

I like the idea of treating them as just data points. And make a very abstract video exploring the visual stimulation of the flowing of data points and how it is created and spread and collected into a giant pool that we are not aware of and kind just updating and running in the background. Then provide the context that those abstract data points are all racial slurs we created over the years in human history.

Some thoughts after one on one with Adam and Lee.

The idea that I am most invested in at the moment is to present the collection of racial slurs as a database, running and updating on the background. I made a looped video to create the effect that it is updating and circulating in the digital world.

1. what is my role in this? Since I am not the one who created the database in the first place. Am I just someone who use this information to make a statement in order to evoke certain emotions? Since I don’t own the data, will that weaken the point that I am trying to make? Am I presenting it to the public to make it more visible since very few people know this database even exist?
2. How do I feel when I was first presented with this data and how do I make a work that can evoke similar emotions. Do I stop at the emotion evoking part or do I want viewers to get more than that? By doing so, am I imposing my own opinion and emotion on the viewer?
3. Out of context, these words are very violent and aggressive. Do I want to avoid it or highlight it? How should I construct my work so I don’t have to write it out loud for people to get my point? Let it be inspirational or confrontational or both at the same time?
4. I started the project with education in mind but the focus slightly shifted to the violence of language. How do I relate or connect these two with the database?

I felt my brain just got fried with sooo many questions. I need to think about them and find answers. I also felt what I am making right now do not encompass all the things I want to say about the issue, nor does it reflect all my emotions, let alone communicate that emotion to my audience. I felt quit stuck for a bit. I don’t know what the next step should be since I spent a lot of time hanging up on this one idea. Lee describe the situation as the visuals does not live up to the intellectual ambition. Which is SOOO accurate. And he suggested that I take a step back and focus on making and experimenting with the different ideas that I had and see where that lead. I also need to think about the implications of each creative decisions I make in those experiments.

So far, my research as been focusing on racial slurs and art work made about racism. I have not looked into how other artists used words in art. Jenny Holzer’s work is a good example of that. I need to redirect or expand my research to those areas as well.

Picture what an orange look like after you juiced it. That is what my brain looks like and felt like right now.

So much more work to be done and so many ideas to explore…

I found a site called the racial slur database. It has been collecting racial slurs via submission since 1999. I was so surprised that it even exists…

As I was transferring all the data to an excel spreadsheet, I was so shocked just how many lines have been created. 2689 was the number. I kept scrolling and it just seemed like bottomless…

Initially, I thought the process was just another dreadful data entry task. When I got to Bs, more than a thousand lines has been created.

I kept thinking about how many lives those horrible words have negatively affected. It was unimaginable…

As I enter each line in the spreadsheet, I had to read the reason/origins of that particular slur. I had some interesting finds:

1. Some of them were created within a specific historical context. For example, Yankee Doodle was used by the British Army to make fun of the rag-tag American army in the revolutionary war.
2. Some are descriptive of distinct skin color, facial features and outfit. For example, Slant refers to asian as they have narrower eyes. Bee-keeper were used for Arab women because they are clothed from head to toe, even their faces, and they look like bee keepers.
3. Some are used as a base word for other slurs. The word Ni** are used in conjunction with other terms to make up the new slur. For example, Sand Ni** for Arabs and Cherry Ni** for Native Americans.
4. Some are based on common myth about other cultures that are not necessary true.
5. Some are abbreviations of a very long, expressive and aggressive slur
6. Some are “code name” used within a very small community
7. Some are names of a famous person/stereotype from that particular culture
8. Somer are created after a significant event (9-11)

The database keep growing and updating. Slurs are created to attack, then other slurs are created to counter the attack. As they circulate within our communities and spread hatred and discrimination like viruses , we will not be able to eliminate those racist ideologies, let alone actions that are driven by those radical racist ideas. Racial slurs act as an agent that reinforce racist ideas, same racist ideas reinforced by an updated vocabulary.

I am not sure what are the motives of the people who started this site. But the information it provides are powerful. It is up to me to figure out how to use that information well to create a strong visual statement.

I spent an entire day researching different ways to create the visual statement of my project, the list of all the racial slur. I thought about projecting it on the face. So I just googled how to project text on your face. And I found an amazing video called Omote created by Nobumichi Asai. (https://www.nobumichiasai.com/works/131/)

He used facial mapping technology to create incredible visuals. I felt so inspired by his work and came up with an idea: what if I could use the same technology to recognize the ethnicity of a viewer then project the corresponding racial slurs that were created for that group on their face. I am not sure if it is achievable technically, at least it sounds very cool and looked amazing in my mind.

Then I jumped back to my original idea which is to present the list as a visual database or dictionary. So I googled media art about database. And I found another great artist: Ryoji Ikeda (http://www.ryojiikeda.com/project/datamatics/)

In response to our group manifesto, in which we proposed a world without borders and a future of unified humanity, I wanted to create a project that deepens the knowledge and understanding of how racist ideas grow and perpetuate within our community in the form of racial slurs and how racial slurs we created through out the history have reinforced the racist ideas we have about people we know very little about. I wanted to highlight the ignorance that are embedded in those racial slurs and the effect of the verbal violence those racial slurs have created.

To do that, I started searching for lists of racial slurs on the internet. I thought if someone have created a database of racial slurs, that would be awesome. And I found it. This site: http://www.rsdb.org. is the only one I found that have compiled a list of racial slurs categorized by racial groups. I wanted to present my findings in the form of a dictionary or visual database and create an immersive and interactive experience for the viewer.

My first idea was to hand print individual terms on the paper and provide the explanation of that term underneath. And hang up all the prints in the room for my audience to explore and learn. I felt very inspired after the monotype pathway session. I experimented with the process of embossing in particular because I think when people were verbally assaulted by racial slurs, it hurts and leaves a dent or mark on your body and heart. ( Frog: The French are said to laugh like frogs. When they laugh, their adam’s apples bulge out of their necks like frogs. Also perhaps from the French delicacy of frog-legs. Another possible derivation is the Fleur-de-Lys displayed on the French king’s banner in the Middle Ages, which, to the English enemy, looked like squatting frogs. UK origins.)

Then I have this idea of consolidating all the racial slurs that I found on a piece of paper and hand it out to the viewer and let them somehow destroy it at the end of the exhibition as an act of empowerment or just an outlet for all the negative feelings they will possibly get from the exhibition. Since using fire is way too dangerous, I thought if I can find some kind of dissolvable paper, I can just let them throw the paper in a tank of water. I found out that wafer paper used for baking are made of potato starch and are advertised as dissolvable and edible. So I experimented with it by printing text on it and tossed in the water. It didn’t work!!! I tried to used hot water to accelerate the dissolving process. It still won’t dissolve on its own without me stirring vigorously with my finger.

I shared my frustration with a friend and she asked me why don’t I just eat it and make it a performance piece since it is edible. That inspired my second idea.

I wanted to make a dictionary of racial slurs and print all of them on the wafer paper and present it like an unhealthy junk food/snack with some humorous nutrition facts printed on the back of it. Since it is made of potato starch. It is vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free. It dissolves in water, so you can flush it down the toilet…

As we kicked off our first project two weeks ago, my art education at RCA has officially started. I am very pleased and impressed with how they constructed the course and designed the project to help us develop our own practice and understand our roles as artist and designers in the 21 century.

Coming from a craft background, whose focus always on the material and process. The practice of contemporary art is refreshing and intimidating. But I know that is also a sign of a great adventure ahead.

You need to be a think and maker. Contemporary artist work with contemporary issues. We challenge the terms that are defined by our predecessors, then either update the vocabulary or redefine them completely. As an artist, our response through artistic expressions to the social and political issues at the moment is part of the human history. We work to raise the awareness of some of the most pressing issues in the world we all live in and help elevate that dialogue.

I am intrigued by the concept of art practice as research. There are conceptual research and material/process research. The work keep changing and evolving as both research going in parallel to each other. Those research inform your art practice as new knowledge, ideas and emotions emerge from that process. The encounter with materials can be quit sobering as you will find out the limitations of certain material in realizing that wild imagination of yours. The outcome is unpredictable. This is totally different than how I used to work. If I had a visual statement I wanted to make. I would have drafted it on my sketchbook and jump right into production to materialize that vision without putting much thought into the concept or spent more time to refine the idea.

Fine Art = Refined Art

In the process of research, we keep refining our ideas and let other ideas stem and grow from that. That is what valuable in creation, and that requires craftsmanship.

I have been told that some students will cry during critiques, because they don’t know how to answer some of the questions people ask during critiques. If all the decisions you made during the process of making are not intentional and well thought out, or you don’t have a solid knowledge of the subject matter, when other people challenge your idea or critique your process, you will have nothing to defend yourself with. If you have already done all the investigation during conceptualization and production. Then you would already have the answers for them. Critiques and feedbacks from other people can become very valuable because you then know how other people translate your message, therefore, help you to learn how to communicate through your work more effectively.

I quit enjoy this new way of working now. It is intellectually stimulating, thrilling and fun!

Not knowing what you work is gonna look like is terrifying and unsettling. It took me some time to fully embrace that feeling. But I am learning a lot and loving every minute of it;)

During our brain storm session with our manifesto group, I found it interesting that out of all the headlines we cut out from the newspapers, we all gravitated towards the word-racist. As a group of students with a very diverse ethnic and cultural background, we all have experienced some form of discrimination regardless where we come from. That is what connected all of us, also why we chose it as the subject of our manifesto project. The rise in racist violence and speech in both U.S and U.K because of all the anti-migrant political debate is why we felt the urge to combat that uprising wave at this particular moment.

I think the transformative power of education is a great tool to use in order to fight racism. So I came up with an idea centering around the education about race and racism by being extremely confrontational with the verbal violence in the context of racism, more specifically, racial slurs that have been created by people across all different cultures.

Racial slurs has been created by people with the intent to insult others who are not part of their community, rejecting their existence using derogatory terms. We as humans tend to reject anything that is foreign and unfamiliar to us. We are protective of our properties and resources. Therefore, any group that could potentially pose a threat to our community needs to be eliminated. Creating a condemning term to describe “the other” seems like a fairly logical move. Then the term someone created to describe “the other” starts to circulate within our community and become common knowledge, especially, if that term is endorsed by authoritative figures in that community. As history progress, those terms are updated, the collection expanded, eventually, we have created a database of racial slurs without knowing it and it is still updating…

I compiled a list of racial/ethnic slurs I found on a website, which was created by someone in 1999 to collect racial slurs from all over the world via submission on the internet. It provided a bank of racial slurs and their reason/origins.

I realized that racial grouping/classification is not just based on the color of your skin. It is interwoven with religious believes and social status.

As I was transferring all those data into an excel spreadsheet, I became very emotional and uncomfortable. It was alphabetized from A-Z. As I got to Bs, there were already more than 1200 lines created, majority of them are for black people. That information was shocking and powerful at the same time. It is quit visual to see which race was targeted the most as they have the longest list.

The ongoing nature of this creation is another upsetting part. I noticed that plenty of slurs were created for Arabs after 9/11. And majority of them are associated with terrorism.

I want to make a work to present this information in a way that is both educational and informative. And communicate all the emotions that I had with the viewer.