MADE IN CHINA, 2018
Through this project we were supposed to generate a question and make ‘Posters‘ for it. And from my perspective, posters could be rather interesting and strange, and they should never be limited within printed stuffs. That’s why I chose to present my questions and maybe answers through 3D printing models.
Project Description
I have numerous questions about life, about the world and about myself beyond this project, and most of them just don’t have the answers. This project gave me a chance to pull some questions out and took a really close look at them. Were they meaningful? Could I answer those questions? Would I complete a project with a rather clear and strong concept with those questions?
After the first week, I got the keywords of ‘exploration’, ‘self-identity’, and combined them with the factors (‘China’, ‘restriction’) which really intrigued me, I got a list of 25 new questions. They had really different directions, and 3 of them, I came up with the final format but did not fill them with contents. That was because that I had basically no overall plans to make them meaningful, but with the idea of focusing on the conflict between parents and children in China, I felt I was highly engaged and there was countless detail to explore.
It’s really strange that in China, many parents’ destinies are fully bonded with their children, from the beginning to the end. In many other countries, parents may sometimes do things which might not respect their children, but that’s temporary, or ‘floating on the surface’, which means they don’t really believe that their children belong to them. However, in China, a large number of parents still treat their children as their properties and don’t give their children the respect they deserve, subliminally or deliberately.
I once been through the process and went through the darkest time of my life, and I tried to communicate with my parents and thing worked much better these years. But for those children who never told their true feelings to their parents? I couldn't imagine how hard their life would be. There was a sad also ironic saying on Weibo (one of the biggest social media in China): Chinese parents are waiting for their children to appreciate them, but Chinese children are waiting for their parents to apologize. And that’s exactly what I think is going on.
And through this project, I wanted to focus on not only the conflict between parents and children in China but also the conflict between society and individual. Others care more about if you are successful or not, nearly no-one cares if you are happy or not. And that’s where the conflict originated, the society assumes that you should be successful first, then you’ll be happy as you already reach the requirement of ‘success’. But sometimes maybe the real order should be, being happy and being comfortable first, and then being successful.
What I wanted to do was to present this question in an ironic way, and try to make the audience connect their own life with these models, and generate their own interpretations. It would be better if this project could lead to self-examination or introspection. And I’ve never imagined that all the classmates, which were from different regions of the world, could always found a way to catch that resonance more or less. Looked like all the parents worldwide were the same more or less LOL. Also, a really delicate question for me to solve is to maintain the level of the ironic elements and sarcastic atmosphere. How to be ironic but without offensive is a new question for me.
About the final outcome, I chose this format for multiple reasons.
First of all, for me, posters are containers or carriers of pieces of information. A poster can be any format from any dimension as long as it delivers the information successfully. So for the presentation of my concept, I tried to interpret my concept in a distinctive way and chose this new method. Secondly, assembling toys could be a rather sarcastic format, as nobody’s life should be treated that way, however, Chinese parents are doing that all the way along with the excuses of ‘I’m doing this for you’, ‘I know what’s best for you’. But in fact, do they really know? And keeping the frames also aggravated the feeling of constraint and restriction.
For me it’s a wonderful project, I’ve nearly never felt so confident about my concept of any of my project. And I tried 3D printing, which is an amazing method I always wanted to try, although it’s a long term project which may only be finished by the end of the semester. I will post my project online once it’s finished, and I will do some interviews in the future with different kinds of parents and children to see if my project really exert an impact.
Last but not the least, this project was the direct inspiration for another project which discussed about ‘Differences’ and also my thesis project ‘Perfection Clinic‘. Here are the links:
Thesis Project / Perfection Clinic
One More Thing
Download the 3D Printing files here to discover more details!
(.stl files are compatible for macbook to preview, don’t worry.)