Bridge 4 & 5 final: Culture Jamming

Bridge 4 & 5 final: Culture Jamming

What is culture jamming? 

Culture jamming is to bring up an issue to a wider audience with a cultural identity in it. The culture can be nationalities, but also cultural movements or a type of cultural items.

Project description

For Studio’s class’ final project is using mediums of your choice and create a final art piece that discusses an issue which involves a culture; basically culture jamming. On 12/14, each student will install their work in the classroom for the final critique.

Art Proposal  

1. What part of culture do you want to jam or offer a critique?

The culture that I want to jam is labor work in China and what I want to convey is about the negativity of the employees and also the positive side of Chinese labor work.

2. What’s the message you want to share with your audience?

The message I want to share is that although labor work in China is quick and efficient, it all comes from the pain from the employees. However, the employees that have attended the labor work has no other choices due their economic status and education status. Especially, an article that I have read about how employees work in factories to manufacture Apple’s products. How Apple has improved the environment and also provided living spaces for them, which they needed as well. Furthermore, since each person is assisted to one job and work for a long time every day, it causes them mental breakdown and tiredness with lack of emotions.

3. What kind of material/medium you are planning on using: photography, video, collage, painting, performance art, sculpture…etc.

The materials/medium that I am going to use for my final project installation are pillows, blankets, slices of bread and Nokia phone. The materials that I am using to create the artwork are pins, fabrics, letter printing, and baking.

4. Which artist or Culture Jammer  (that we have covered in class or you saw at the Guggenheim or you have been researching on your own) are you looking at for inspiration? Make sure to include an image of their work that you find inspiring.

The work that I think can connect to my work from the exhibition at Guggenheim is called Made in China, by XuTan. Where he installed different products from China and created a “bedroom” and “bathroom”. The colors and composition that he chose and placed is aesthetic and eye-catching. Especially the metallicity of the sliver and gold color.

Planning: 

My initial idea was to do an art piece that involves textures and repetition, something that is sort of conceptual. To build up my idea, I built from my two pillow art pieces which I did not have the chance to build up and expand from it. Therefore, my two pillow art pieces were my starting point. I thought about the idea to do the two pillow is when I was sitting on the car and staring at nothing, and sort of suddenly thought about why don’t I combine my textiles on the pillow? Furthermore, to make the whole art piece a set, so I added a blanket to it and developed to a “bedroom” art installation.

 

From research, I mainly researched what brands’ products are manufactured in China, so I can iron on the logos of these brands to the blanket. Also, from writing the research paper, I learned more about the living conditions that the workers were living and how the working environment is. It helped me more to explain and build my wall text for my art piece.

Outcome:

 Show what was explored/ researched/ made/ written in Studio and Seminar. Write a clear description of each item. Show how what you researched in seminar influenced studio and vice versa.

 What I have researched was Chinese Labour and I used the knowledge I know from my research to correspond each feature of my art piece. The first pillow with the pins represents how their labour is all done mostly by themselves and also repetitively. This corresponded to my research, where the fact that the Chinese labour sometimes has to work more time because of the low wages that they got. As I mentioned before, I did some research on brands that have items that are made in China. Therefore, this has allowed me to create the logos on the blankets are companies, for example, the logo of Apple. Additionally, the in print of the image of Chinese workers doing labour on the blanket corresponds to the what I have written about the working conditions in my research paper.

 

The rest of the features, like the second pillow which has Chinese letters representing ‘time’, ‘dream’ and ‘emotions’, but also traditional Chinese fabrics showing its culture and which country it is from the whole entire art piece representing. Moreover, If you look around the bed, there are slices of bread that have words meaning different emotions, which then represents the emotions that need to survive and lacking of emotions that they have when working. My art piece is to give the uncomfortableness to the viewer, also to show the other side of manufacturing and the issues for labour.

 

Thinking

Show your thought process about your Seminar Bridge 4. What does your Bridge4 Seminar project communicate? How did the research process affect your understanding and then your writing/making? What is most successful or interesting about this project?

My research in Seminar Bridge 4 is quite direct to my studio’s art piece. What I have researched is what I have done to create the final art piece. For, the research paper and art piece are separated, however, the research that I have done in seminar definitely let me be fluence to explain my piece and to have the real facts to support my statement for Chinese labour. Overall, I think the most successful part is to create the artwork itself and thinking about what materials to use to strengthen and create my art piece. Also, it is interesting to play with compositions and materials wise; you really can experiment different mediums.

 

Conclusion 
The project is important to my learning because it is both challenging to use your written work and combine it with your final piece.Also, you have to think through how you are going to show your research in visual. I think testing and experimenting materials was one of the huge parts for me to learn because you get to explore different mediums and try if they work or not. Both seminar and studio are like building a house, you have to have a strong base to able to build further. So, researching more on your topics creates more evidences to your paper and experimenting more/ creating more items helps you to produce your final art piece. Lastly, for next year, I have chosen the fashion seminar and studio, which will be a new experiment and I am excited to make new works relating to fashion. I think in the past classes, I have experiences in a lot of textiles, therefore I still can apply these to my further classes.

 

Final Critique

What qualities of the work make you feel it is success?

• Companies logos on the bed, a lot of Chinese workers work in the company.
• The pillow with many pins on it, think of forced labour ( metaphor of forcing).
• Shapes: rectangle, restrictions to the workers.
• Bring food-ephemeral, bread speaks to the content. Bread: a strong symbol.
• Open-load information.
• Number of hooks.
• bread is really interesting.
• All these emotions on the bread.

 

Where does the artwork not work for you, and why?

-Using matte sheets instead of shining.

-Felix Gonzalez Torres: bed, enprint in the pillows. – references

-Indented the pillow maybe?

-Queen size bed is too big for workers, maybe two beds look like dorm.

-Slik is more expensive in China, switching a material?

-maybe a lot of bread- powerful and develop in a larger piece?

 

 

Process 

 

Final Installation