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13/10/2024

* THINK ABOUT ‘THE OTHER’ *

*

Foraging - looking for evidence around me to help me find my context and sense of place at this particular moment in time. 
I found a little green book which was issued to me when I registered at the 'Alien's Department', 2/10/1996

 
May be a good starting place to think about self-identity and 'the other'?  

Perceived as an alien in the UK, who is perceived an alien in Bulgaria?  Roma Gypsies. Gay People. Immigrants. Marginalised people. Disabled people.


***
Ex pats - Бивши патки (a linguistic joke - 'Pat' in bulgarian reminds one of 'patka'= duck 
SO : ex-pat = former duck (hahahaha) 
So what could a former duck be now? Invent characters -  a cockerel? A swan? A cat? 

* 

Bulgarians are good at blending in - White Europeans - but what are the giveaway signs? OBSERVE 

***DISGUISE*** 

*Estelle Hanania refs* - linked to feeling out of place - a black sheep- an alien?? 

anotherfullcircle 
***


*Read 'Appadurai' Histories make Geographies

NOTES 

Summary 

The text is about the evolution of culture on a global and a local level, and how this constant development is influenced by a range of factors, such as various forms of circulation (novels, ballet, cinema, fashion magazines etc.), how they meet established circulation circuits, and also make new ones, depending on the context of the local culture.

The idea that histories make geographies, rather than the other way around means that historical agents, institutions, and powers are responsible for creating geographies, not a spatial landscape that time writes its story against. 

Production of locality 

Forms of circulation / circulation of forms

Production of locality 

Cultural fusion
E.g.Besarabian Bulgarians 

Argentinian Welsh 

German Turks
Repressed cultural forms - countries like Russia - creative underground , ex communist republics 

Opening ceremony Olympics vs LGBT propaganda laws 


Conspiracy theories - using same networks as general interest info (FB, groups etc) 

***

Reflect 
This text was very interesting to me, as my work deals a lot with visual symbolism, communication and messaging through clothing, which is influenced by global but also local factors, and the translation of these meanings in different contexts. It also makes me think about the effect of different forms of circulation that could be used to reach different audiences.
Today, global cultural flows, whether religious, political or market produced, have entered into the manufacture of local subjectivities, thus changing both the machineries for the manufacture of local meaning and the materials that are processed by these machineries
The form results in acculturation, amalgamation and assimilation, creolisation - in clothing/ music/food, and results of ethnoscapes 
Communication / exchange networks - legal and illegal
Information exchange 
Traffic - flow - exchange of information, capital, creation of networks 

Histories produce geographies - unified symbols  example of symbols of protection, shevici - embroidery - balkan, Scandinavian, aztec 
Positive and negative sides - two sides of the same coin 
Situationist International 
Psychogeography 
Beuys  - Ideas and Actions,1988 ref: P0500 and Alain Borer, The Essential Joseph Beuys, 1996 ref: P0125

*
Course wise, it has been a week of a lot of incoming new information, grappling with terminology and making sense of various points of view and contexts. 
Some new words and terms in the context of Interculturality 
  • Acculturation
  • Assimilation
  • Amalgamation
  • Transculturation
  • Transculturality
  • Multiculturalism =
  • Psychogeography = emotional response to city scapes

***ADD***

* John Jordan notes :

* Benessaieh notes : Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, Transculturalism

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10/10/2024, Thursday

Starting to work on some ideas for the UNIT 1 project proposal - the task is to find a sense of place / personal idenity 

I am thinking about how to link this to my personal outfit. 
There is only one way - I have to think about how this is expressed through clothing - transcultural or intercultural, clothing as a way of defining identity, standing out / blending in. 


* 

A new word I really liked this week is 

REIFICATION *Making the abstract visible*

****

Some refs that I have been thinking about which arfe very relevant for my ideas of 'otherness' 

* 

row 1 - Yayoi Kusama, Walking Piece, 1966 - standing out 
row 2 - photographer: Jason Evans, stylist: Simon Foxton, Strictly, i-D magazine, 1991 - blending in 

Yayoi Kusama piece - relates to the idea of preserving one's identity, or at least trying to - feeling lost in the dominant culture? 
Simon Foxton/ Jason Evans images - relate to the idea of transculturality & assimilation, thoughts on race/colonialism / New Britishness / establishment vs immigration 

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07/10/2024, Tuesday

*** My first blog post *** 
The start of the Journey. 
Where am I? Where will I go?

THE HERE AND NOW: 


18.55
my office 
3rd floor 
10 Kingscourt Road 
Streatham Hill 
London 
England
UK 
Europe 
Earth 
The Universe

This 'zooming out' reminds me of the Charles and Ray Eames video and book "The Powers of Ten". 
The camera zooms into the skin of two people having a picninc in Central Park. 





How to Apply Eames's Legendary "Powers of 10" to Real-life Problems - Fast  Company
Interestingly, it was made in 1977, the same year I was born. A full circle? 




IDEA OF HOME 

Where is home? 
Is home where 'the heart' is? 
Where is the heart? 
What makes somewehre home? 

Home will always be Sofia. 

***


ВКЪЩИ / HOME   

Left - the stairs in house where I grew up, Sofia, Bulgaria (shared coridors) 
Right - the house where I live now, London, England                                                                                        

СВЕТЛИНАТА / THE LIGHT

Листата 
Планината 
дървото 
ъгъла с трамвая 

* 

It is hard to know where to start with this. I know I have to be authentic. So perhaps the only way through would be to  talk about things which mean something to me. 

***

Another full circle? 




( I love full circles, physical or figurative. It is a bit of an obsession ) 

*The full circle of living in Fashion St 20 years ago, and teaching there 20 years later 

<!-- wp:preformatted {"backgroundColor":"background"} -->
<pre class="wp-block-preformatted has-background-background-color has-background">I feel I need to go back to my childhood, where everything stems from, the place to go to make sense of things. 

*

My father was a translator. When I was little, he worked at the National Film Centre in Boyana  and did the translation and subtitles for so many of the English language films that came to Bulgaria in the 80's, such as Star Wars, ET, etc. etc. I have a strong memory of countless evenings spent playing in the same room where my parents were working, my dad stretched out on the sofa, dictating the translated film dialogue to my mum, who would type it up on a typewriter. The sound of the typewriter, the look of it, the metal keys, the typeface, the indigo, the paper are all etched in my memory, so it feels relevant to go full circle by looping back to the idea of the typewriter for my blog, at least aesthetically. 

Ideally, I would like to blog physically and digitally, in both English and Bulgarian. I want to buy a couple of typewriters, one with Bulgarian and one with English lettering, and use the typewriter font for my digital blog. 

I will begin the search. 

*

I went to a film festival "Altered States", showing experimental films with live scores being performed. The introduction to the festival was done not by the standard way of a welcome speech, but by a person typing the speech on a typewriter, and the typing being simultaneously projected on the screen behind them. 
I though that this was a great idea as it utilised analog technology in a good way, and also broke the cliche of a welcome speech. It made the audience really pay attention to what was being typed, and patiently wait for each word to be revealed.