First Term Essay: The Paradises, Agents of Storytelling

            For the first term essay, I ended up choosing an object that I had been enamoured with since I first saw it; one of a pair of Chinese models called the Chinese Rock Gardens housed in the Museum of Childhood. I had first visited the museum in my last year at university and they had immediately caught my attention. The models are quite large and intricately decorated with luxurious materials such as ivory, mother of pearl and precious metals. What interested me was why they were in the Museum of Childhood in the first place; They looked very much out of character for the museum as highly decorative, delicate objects that certainly did not look like they were meant to be ‘played with’. The label contained very little information on the objects too, only disclosing that they were from Canton in China from 1780-1800, and that legend has it that they had been headed to the Empress Josephine from the Emperor Jiaqing. But I found this to be a limited story, and sought to draw out more from the object itself.

The collections manager at the Museum of Childhood, Catherine Howell, shared the file for The Chinese Rock Gardens, also called The Paradises, which held some of the previous research into the objects. Most of the contents was a research project by Kate Hay, curator in the Furniture department at the V&A. She revealed that the objects originally came from the India Museum, before moving to the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria & Albert Museum), and then the Bethnal Green Museum (now the Museum of Childhood). It also uncovered that the Chinese Rock Gardens had a sibling, which no longer was displayed at the V&A. A third Paradise was ‘in storage’, although later it was realised to be on display at the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, depicting a Daoist Temple. It became apparent that these models had a far more interesting story than the label gave it credit for, and so I decided that the objective of my essay was to complicate, and hopefully rejuvenate, their given narrative.

I wanted to explore three aspects of the Paradises: Firstly, I researched a little more about Canton and the carvers who might have made the object. I also wanted to find out the credibility of the story of Empress Josephine that was placed as such an important part of the object; Secondly, I contacted the East Asian department to see if there was another object to compare it to. Malcolm McNeill, a curator from the department showed me an ivory Summer Palace in storage at the V&A. It highlighted that the Paradises, although beautiful, was not considered exquisite and so therefore in its design and material seemed to have other motives beyond being impressive and exotic curios. Malcolm also suggested that the individual Paradise I had chosen could be linked to the Daoist story of The Peach Blossom Spring, which became an important part of the research for the second chapter.

            The last chapter, which for me turned out to be the most interesting part of the process, focused on the movement of the Paradises from different locations and how the methods of display pushed certain agendas onto the models. The India Museum employed the Paradises in 1837, much like the infamous Tipu’s Tiger – as an exotic curiosity of the Far East, The Paradises were a spectacular display of a land and a race from a far off land. The South Kensington perhaps slightly improved their use, as in the 1880s, the museum was mainly used as an education tool for Design students, where The Paradises were part of a growing Oriental Section. However, it could still be questioned whether the models in both these institutions ever had their own agency, as they were always part of an impressive spectacle of British imperial power.

            The Paradises came to the Bethnal Green Museum in the 1930s. The development towards becoming the Museum of Childhood was already well under way by this time under the director, Arthur Sabin. The conclusion I came to was that within this space, the Paradises have been able to fulfil its role as a storyteller in itself, without the overpowering of the legend attached to the models. Under a roof containing many objects from around the world, The Paradises are there to inspire, regardless of its slightly course making, and its flashy Chinoiserie style, it is not its exotic nature that is most important in the Museum of Childhood. The Paradises are instead, left to be explored by an audience who have the ability to draw out its most significant feature – a story of wonder, a playground for imagination uninhibited by the boundaries of society and age.

All photographs from the V&A Search the Collections website, accessed here.

Photography: Berlin, Hamburg, and a new home.

At the beginning of the summer, Jonas and I made another trip to Germany. First to Berlin: although I'd been before, I felt I hadn't spent enough time there and this time Jonas and I could really get into exploring properly. We ate a lot of ice cream and saw a good few exhibitions that I count as some of the best I've ever experienced.

We also moved in together with some friends, into an area with a lot of character, and lots of odd bits and bobs that get left around in the street. I ought to take more photographs of it out in the winter, I've got out of the habit of bringing my camera everywhere.











More on my photo blog here.

Japan Photography.

In September, my family and I lived out a life-long dream of visiting Japan for a whole 15 days. We traveled to several destinations: Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto and Osaka to finish off. Of course if you had seen my Instagram you'll have seen plenty of the novelty Japanese treats we had... but I also brought my camera with me.

These pictures have sat on my hard drive for a while; at the time, I felt like they weren't as magical as the experience was (question is, are photographs, and should photographs, ever be good as the real thing?). But since looking back a few days ago, I think I had a few gems. Japan, I will be back.


















As usual, more are posted on my photo blog here.

Resolutions and Refresh.

It has been a whirlwind these last few months and thus my promises have been unkept as usual...BUT it's January now, and with some further encouragement from my tutors, I ought to continue with what I started. To begin with I think it's time that I change my URL to something more interesting and relevant, and possibly a new look?

Here is my refreshed resolution:
I would like to write once a week about something... whether that be about an article I've come across, some research I've done, or something I'm working on. Just as I had done with my previous work, I need to make sure that I am consistent and constantly writing. After all I need the practice!

Up next, those promised photographs.

An Update and a New Direction.

As you can tell from another long hiatus, I am up to a whole lot of new and different things which I am looking forward to sharing with you. The first month as a design historian has been a challenge, but for once it's a relieving challenge. I am surrounded with incredible new colleagues, all inspiring and really really smart and it's exciting to be in a space together learning! I'm learning a whole lot of new words and ways to describe 'stuff' and I've just written my first essay, short but kind of a new way of thinking and talking about design.

SO. Now with our first kind of 'reading'/'projects' week, I've set myself the challenge to rekindle my relationship with you, blog. This has been the outlet that has got me through, been a place of safe criticality and just a way of sharing with you what life is like doing lots of design stuffs. But now, what with less making and more thinking, this blog is going to end up going on a slight tangent to before, as a space for research sure, but its more about the words now I guess. I have to challenge myself to be looking at the world slightly differently, so I'm hoping it will be here that I start to practice some reviewing and documenting, describe some books, some performances, some events, and maybe show my image-making a little if I get the chance. You'll be happy to know I've set up a drawing club with HoD, so history of design is not just about being historical now. It's just weird getting used to being a 'historian' to some effect, but I'm hoping to make that definition as broad as possible. It would feel strange if I didn't do lots and lots and lots of things.

Between the last post and this one, I've done lots of things which I hope I can share with some photography (when I get them developed this week whoops). I've been to Japan with my family, as you may know from Instagram. Lots of pics from that so hopefully I can get a hold of those soon... Anyway, stay tuned for some exhibition reviews because I'm hoping to go to a good handful of them before I have to get back to being an MA student again!

Also here's two prams full of miniature poodles.

Update and End of the Line.

Clearly in my last post I had promised too much so now that we're heading into September... I can admit it has been both hectic and yet I feel a little more relaxed. Since our final show we've had our graduation, and then that's it! I've received my certificate, and just sweet sweet relief. I moved out way back in June into a new flat in North London with Jonas, and Laura and Chris joined us too, leaving Nottingham behind. Hannah also moved in round the corner to us, so it's great to feel like it is a fresh start, but then again it's more that I get to spend even more time with some of my best friends. As I am the only student in the house now, I've been able to spend a lot of time on my own which has actually becoming really good downtime for me. I've been able to read, and weave, and just calm down from life as a design student, and prepare myself for becoming a design history student. That's not to say I've not stopped working, more that it's working out in my brain what I am capable of, and where I can sit in this funny design world. At the end of the day, I may have disliked the last three years, but that doesn't ever mean I would want to leave it behind forever. As much as I want to scrutinise, analyse and appreciate design as a design historian, there is also such pleasure as thinking and making as a designer, and I will miss printing the most, absolutely. I promise, it won't be stopping any time soon!

 So backtracking, I ought to show what I have been doing since even May! There have been some work that I haven't yet revealed...

Early this year, my housemate Pippa had been talking about making a fashion film for her graduate collection, and I was really interested in getting to combine my love for moving image and fashion. Separately I'd been talking to my friend James who was interested in making sets, including for a fashion setting. So we embarked on this super fast turnaround task to make a film called 'End of the Line.' I started storyboarding a couple of weeks before shooting, and roping in a friend from second year Illustration (the lovely Kate!), in about three weeks, James had made the set and we'd shot the film!

The concept was formed from the concept for Pippa's collection, which uses the figure of 'the trainspotter'. We formulated a character for her, and figured out her obsessions and agenda for our two minute film. We wanted a tongue-in-cheek film that was the right balance of cheek, fun and yet had a practical and absurd edge.

I'm really happy with the overall outcome. As the first fashion film I had ever made, I was pleased to find that I could do so much, and the finish was exactly what I wanted. Hopefully I can do more stuff using film, and I have some more ideas and collaborations coming up so fingers crossed they can come to light!

See the film here.

Another another Update: Skills Project 'My Voice is an Instrument'.

Clearly these hiatuses are getting a common factor as the years have gone by, and again more and more apologies. I hope that from now on I won't have to be as apologetic, as I should have both material and time to blog about! I hope you all haven't felt too much in the dark.

Since my last posts, it has been a real rollercoaster ride for me, not quite the ideal to reach assessment and ultimately degree show but maybe expected. I decided after an emotional FMP that for my Skills project, I would make something else. Along similar themes, I decided on the subject of the female voice in its different forms, in spoken word, in song, in rhyme. I wanted to compare this expression to music as a fluid and powerful form, and as a real passion that I miss from my singing days in school, I wanted to encapsulate it visually in a truly interactive format. In my research, I found this incredible poem 'Honest Speech' by Erin Schick on Button Poetry which you can see here. It really brought me to tears and I felt like I could relate to the silencing by others because of you, something that is integral to your identity. I may not stutter, but what I love about her poem is that in her performance of 'Honest Speech' she herself is defying those who are exactly trying to shut her up and shut her out. I wanted to celebrate her voice, a voice that needs listening to, a voice that wants and is being heard.

This did not go down well... it became quite apparent that the qualms from FMP were going to emerge again, and well to put a long story short... I concluded that the tutors that I had were not prepared to support me as a student, and I was not going to give up again on a project that I needed to do. I knew I could do it well and do Erin Schick's poem justice, and my work would have a reason for existing.

I decided to go ahead with the project on my own, and from there I felt so much more liberated and excited by it. I wanted to make an interactive print that would perform Schick's poem. Using the HackSpace, and the help of Alice Stewart, I found out that I could make a print 'talk' using conductive ink and a cool gadget called a TouchBoard (more info here at Bare Conductive - it's very exciting!). What I was attempting to make is actually a pretty simple process so after talking through the idea with Alice, I went with making a series of large prints for an exhibition that HackSpace was hosting in collaboration with our local gallery, The Stanley Picker Gallery, called TECHNO. The conductive paint is supposed to be designed to print on larger scales but...it comes with a cost! And at the moment it is still a lot like tar in its final form so it does have to be diluted a little. At first I had planned 3 prints, but that didn't work out so well so I ended up with one.

I was dying to use words. After working on YIN and YANG, and looking at endless amounts of beautiful typography, I really wanted to use it in my image making. I am after all, working with words for the next two years in my life. I treated it like 'notation' as opposed to an alphabet. I wasn't really seeking to make a typeface as such, but to manipulate what was already there, just like how notation on a page works. Perhaps later on I would love to design a typeface that reflects a stutter, but for now I really wanted to put across the ideas and ideals in the poem. And so I went with a mechanical manipulation, which I hoped would reflect the defiance of the 'normal'. I chose Times New Roman, the default serif, and distorted them using a photocopier. The outcome was surprisingly fluid and lyrical and yet simultaneously disjointed.

Using the words from Schick's poem, I tried to visualise particular parts of each section of the poem that moved me most using different ways of manipulating type. I really strongly wanted to stick to the  themes within the poem, and I was really drawn to a particular line in 'Honest Speech':

'My voice is an instrument, my stutter

it's greatest symphony, my speech

composed

by God.'

Her speech was so strongly linked with the voice as music that I couldn't not link it somehow. I researched into John Cage and Fluxus and Dieter Schnebel, who's intent was to turn the discipline of music upside down in not only a sonic but physical way, pushing instruments and in Schnebel's case, the human body to extreme limits to create sound, to create music. The visual language of their music also was often totally different to traditional sheet music, created out of seemingly random lines, lists of instructions, rules, colours and beautiful shapes (an awesome example performance here). I read a lot on stutters and it's social and sonic perception, and this project really solidifies just how much I love to research on content. It just makes me so excited to link all of these themes and topics together, and Alice then suggested I should write an essay to go alongside my print for the TECHNO show... so I did. 

After my crit for the Skills project, which again didn't go too well, I decided this was what was going to represent me at my degree show. I reworked the images to become more reliable, interactive and spectacular. I photocopied a series of Ss, creating new identities for the letter S. The forms are beautiful and solid, and in some ways, also looking like classic notes.

I then arranged it to become a three metre long wallpaper. Rosa and I hand painted the staves with the conductive paint so that it would definitely be reactive. And this is it:

I also reworked my book which contained my essay, which I had laid out to reflect the subject of each chapter:

At first, I was dubious about my outcome. I think by the end of this university experience, especially with such huge amounts of negativity towards the end, I was totally knackered, and every decision I made felt like a bad one. In hindsight, I feel really relieved and proud of this work and I'm so glad that I made it to the end, and made it to the end with this project. It is my own defiance, and totally my own and I love it. The poem still makes me cry, it still makes me think and this project makes me like myself. I'm glad to put these issues somewhere where people can't hide. We all are responsible for our actions. We all need to start listening and thinking and engaging. 

I'm sorry for another long and winding, and a little non-sensical, blog post. After some time away from university, tutors and work relating to my course in general, revisiting such a shit time feels like a blizzard and I think I'm still trying to get to grips with how I feel about university in general. As you can tell, a lot of feels going on. But all in all, I'm just thankful that I have been able to pull something out of the bag that is relevant to me and relevant to many. I am trying to come to terms with the fact I won't get the grade I want, and haven't been appreciated much for working hard, for being dedicated, and thus it's been a bit of time to give myself recognition and commitment to drive me forward. I swear to God, if I ever end up teaching (which I would love to) the first thing I would express is real commitment to them and their intent. But in the end, my time has university has given me the opportunity to meet other incredible mentors, some of which live just in the next rooms to me. I would really love to continue this project into some other formats as well, maybe an animation or moving image. I am so glad to have found Erin Schick's poem and I hope one day that she sees this and I hope she likes it. I'm so glad that all these young people around me, my friends and classmates, are so awesome and have stepped in where my teachers have failed me. They have inspired me beyond belief, and I really wish the best for all of our futures!