Qtiewhale

For the object story project, I teamed up with Jack and Yve. Initially, I attracted to Jack’s story about his box–how it could be perceived as something different if seen from another perspective. I immediately thought of Issey Miyake’s origami pieces and Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballett.

For the project, I am thinking of making something based on the psychology of shape and colour. But Jack and I came to the conclusion that it would be quite difficult to execute. He also wanted to highlight the philosophy behind the box, and not the box itself. Yve then came into the group and added her own object story: illusion, a dream and reality, a concept of betrayal. With a mix of abstract ideas, we tried to search for common ground.

The starting point came from me. I realized when our class present their object, the object itself became something of identity and broke my prejudices about them. Later my flatmates did a room tour and some of their room looked completely different than I anticipated.

One of my flatmates, Ellen, in her room. She’s a BA Costume for Performance student who loves photographing her friends and she can fly a plane!

One of my flatmates, Sophie, in her room. From the outside, she seems like a bubbly, talkative, fierce girl. Her room shows otherwise, it’s very neat and she has a lot of knitting and sewing stuff, as she does her BA in Embroidery.

This intrigued a question on my mind: if one stripped bare, would we be able to identify them? How important is an object to identity? I found a photographer from China, Huang Qingjun, who has been photographing Chinese families with their household possessions in front of their house. It’s interesting to see how objects can differentiate one with another and even tell others about their social status and financial condition.

Huang Qingjun’s “Family Stuff”

Based on my idea, we explored some possibilities for the outcome:

I have different ideas from targeting international students to tell stories of their object that has sentimental value and/or help them cope with cultural shock. This idea could be used as a campaign for student accommodation. Another idea is to have multiple illustrations/photographs of someone from different perspectives.

Another inspiration, a campaign “Living is Winning” by La Cimade.

We combined Yve’s idea, we were thinking of adding mirror to represent the sense of illusion and betrayal from Yve’s story. The subject would stand in front of a mirror, and the camera would move slowly from one standpoint to another. And when the camera moved completely, the subject’s objects will be seen and reveal the subject’s hidden self. But doing this requires a big mirror, studio, and proper camera so we eventually ditched the idea.

After a lot of considerations, we chose to present a video about prejudice. How you perceived someone’s outer self or their “ephemeral self”, and how you perceived them when you see their objects in their most private space: bedroom. Reaching this final concept was quite a challenge for the three of us since we all had a lot of ideas, but we were confused about putting it out there. The three of us speak different languages and English is not our mother tongue. Even on the shooting day, we had a brief discussion on how the video would turn out. So we decided to get a lot of footages and compromised when we edit the video afterwards.

The shoot for our object story took place at The Costume Store, an accommodation own by UAL. Jack recorded the video, while Yve and I directed the talent and set the room. The muses, Sophie and Timami, helped us with the styling and makeup. We took a lot of footages, including the detail of the objects.

The shoot went smoothly, and we went straight to editing the day after. Jack contributed his ideas of how the output would be, while Yve and I edited the video separately, but with similar editing. We got inspired by one of the films showed by Vicky in the class (I can’t remember the title, I’ve been searching for it on Youtube but I can’t find it) about a man who brings out women from behind his umbrella. The technical way of cutting the clip, put another clip, and back to the first clip to create an element of surprise. We put moody/ ambience sound to better enhance the scene. I found a site called epidemicsound.com that has a lot of cool sound effects to use for free.

The last thing we do is colouring the video. We agreed on colouring the videos in a different colour to emphasize each persona. We also added the credits as it is important to mention all the people involved in the creation.

The object that I chose for the object story is a bottled water.

Before I came to the UK, I didn’t thinking much of any cultural differences that I’d probably face. When I first arrived in London, I realized that there are no douche spray in the toilet. In the past, I’ve been visiting some other countries that also don’t have douche spray in their washroom. And since I usually went for a short time, I’ve never felt like it’s something bothersome. Yet this time, I’m going to live with it.

Douche spray is common in Indonesia. It’s a standard for a toilet as they have this in every loo you’ll get into. At some remote places, they have a bucket filled with water and water dipper. So it came as no surprise for me, who have lived 24 years with water-equipped restroom, to have major cultural shock. That’s why, to cope with the situation, I usually bring a small (500ml) bottled water with me or wet the toilet paper beforehand.

Example of a toilet in remote area in Indonesia

I was asked if having douche spray is just something I’ve been living with and accepted my whole life? I had an assumption before: since it’s usually something common for a country with many Moslems, it’s probably derived by religious factor (I saw douche spray in Istanbul, Turkey and some classmates from India said they have it in their country). I searched for some information and turned out that using water to clean yourself is one of the Islamic Toilet Etiquette and as a Moslem majority country, Indonesia has been using it since forever. Water used daily to clean our body, notably the Wudhu ritual before offering prayers. This means if we go to the lavatory and not clean our self with water, we’re not allow to pray. There are several rules to this etiquette, including going into the bathroom with the left feet and leaving it with the right feet, remain silent, and not to eat anything inside. One should wash one’s hands before leaving as well. I know that these regulations exist, yet I forget the fact that it’s Islamic etiquettes.

P.S. While researching about the etiquettes, I found something interesting that would probably change my life for the better:

Yes! A portable douche spray! It’s a thing! I don’t know if it’ll make me more comfortable or not but I’m ordering one for myself. Fingers crossed!

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The Hidden Self

Coping with Culture Shock.