Culture jamming is a “movement to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions”. In other words it is to make a satirical piece making fun of a mainstream idea. I decided to culture jam an old book of laws called Kanuni. I think that many people don’t pay attention to this problem in the Albanian society they treat this topic very lightly. They consider this topic a very “common thing” and they don’t talk about it or do anything to help or prevent blood feuds from continuing and taking more lives. I wanted to show how “gore” this book has become. My audience would be Albanians and I would like it that my final project would be displayed in the city center so everyone can see it and also interact with it.
In the beginning when I got the assignment for Studio I was kind of lost, I wasn’t sure what I was interested in and I didn’t know what I really wanted to focus on. I knew I wanted to talk about Albania because there are a lot of things that I was more familiar with rather than other topics that wouldn’t be very personal. So than I thought about which is the least popular thing that people focus on and don’t talk about, and than I thought about the Kanuni of Lekë Dukagjini and how a book written in 1910 (it was created way before that time but no one wrote it down). This book was to put laws into place since there was no real government and Albania kept getting invaded over and over again so Lekë Dukagjini (researchers think he might have had mental problems) decided to take matters in his own hands so he created this set of rules.
These rules were very violent and not fair at all. Woman weren’t supposed to be touched or mistreated accept by their husbands or their fathers. A father had the right to kill his son or daughter if they disobeyed him, also he had the right to beat his wife and not allow her to go out.
When I started this project I was very confused and I didn’t know which direction to go. My first idea was to make a project about how waiters give the check to man and not to woman but when I was trying to do research I couldn’t find any information on that topic. Than I decided to change and do a more familiar topic, that I know more information about. I also thought it would be interesting for other people to learn something new about a different culture.
My first idea as a sketch
Picked my materials for the project
I was very happy to find what I wanted to use as materials at the Blick store but unfortunately when I went back to repurchase them they were gone. So every time I had to make new prototypes to see if the PVC paper was the right one. This was very time consuming.
This was the first prototype which held liquid. Inside I tried to mix shampoo with red and clack acrylic paint and it is visible that the red paint is not mixed well. So than I decided to switch to fake blood with shampoo to make it less liquidly because if it is very runny than it is hard to seal the two PVC sheets together.
In the beginning I was planning to make a book but after speaking with Bryan I decided to make a box frame out of wood.
Than inspired by what they wear I decided to knit this little “thing” by my self I thought it would make a contrast between the softness of the wool and the “roughness” of the wood. 
I had some accidents and the glue wasn’t glued that well so the “page” ended up leaking.
The final piece.
My seminar class really helped by researching I really got to understand more and more things about this book. I helped my piece improve.
Come of the critique I got was about the text being a bit distracting and not covering the wooden box. I agree with what people said about the text. I think It could be improved but given the time I had I tried to do my best. However, for the box to be covered I kind of disagree I really like the texture of the box and how it looked. I like mixing different textures and also the wooden box adds more to the pice and gives the vibe of more hand made.
My interests for next year is focus more on fashion design. Also explore more what can I create with PVC sheets and liquid. I think it is an interesting idea and I would like to see how far I can push it.
