Throughout these past 5 weeks of attending BCM320 Seminars I have learnt a lot about Digital Asia and autoethnography. In short, a recap of what I have learnt is that autoethnography is a process of encountering personal experience in order to understand other cultural experiences.
I find it interesting to learn about another culture, other than my own. Being multilingual myself, belonging to the Australian culture as well as Serbian culture has opened a whole new, wider experience for myself. In comparison to some of my friends that only speak one language. It has enabled me to be apart of two completely different worlds, with different cultures, social norms and attitudes towards certain aspects of life. Being raised within the Serbian culture and growing up with those norms and attending Australian school and learning the Australian culture and norms, has made my world quite unique and a different experience to that of my friends and other individuals born in Australia.
BCM320 has provided me with the opportunity to learn about a new culture, an Asian culture of my choice. I am quite excited to be taking part in this independent research project and learning about another ‘third’ culture, I have previously not looked into depth and explored. However, one that I have previously been exposed to.
My project ideas
Today I’m going to explain what I have selected to do for my independent autoethnographic project. When the tutor asked me to come up with five ideas I was a bit startled, as I didn’t have any ideas. I then got thinking…my first idea was to analyse Chinese desserts, make one myself and film a video. This idea was too similar to my friends, so I stuck with another idea I was more passionate about. Another idea I had was to explore Vietnamese Bloggers and recreate my own blog. My third idea was to analyse Vietnamese Beauty Bloggers such as YouTubers and recreate my own video. My forth and final idea was to study Vietnamese cultural drawings and recreate my own sketches.
My Independent Project Final Idea:
I came up with this idea based on hearing someone mention the word ‘art’ in class today. It brought me back to the time in high school when I created a three piece painting for my major art project. This project was also based on ‘culture’ more specifically my family’s journey of migration. Below I have attached a photograph of my final work. This made me think… why don’t I incorporate something I am really passionate about, however, haven’t spent enough time doing recently… drawing?
Photograph: my major artwork in High School designed and painted by myself (2015)
I have decided to create Vietnamese cultural drawings. The reason I selected ‘Vietnam’ out of all the Asian countries, is after a pinterest search I conducted. After this search I found a few interesting artworks that really got me passionate about recreating similar ones.
Pinterest: Vietnamese artwork
Pinterest: Vietnamese artwork
Pinterest: Vietnamese artwork
Pinterest: Vietnamese water painting artwork
Pinterest: Vietnamese water painting
Data (Type)
The data type I will be looking at is pinterest photographs of cultural artworks done in the past. I was quite impressed with the sketches and water paintings that I found on pinterest. I have decided for my project I will be recreating black and white sketches.
Pinterest: Painting of Vietnamese Boatman
Research (Speculate)
I will be researching artworks created throughout history that tell a cultural Vietnamese story. I want my project to educate my viewers about another culture, the ‘Vietnamese’ culture, through narrative form.
“Vietnamese art is one of the most celebrated styles in the world” (culture trip 2018.)
Vietnamese art consists of clay pots created during the Stone Age to modern, eclectic installations decorating Vietnam’s biggest cities.
I decided to focus on ‘cultural’ artworks in particular, as I am passionate about the whole aspect of different cultures. I am a very cultural person myself and love learning about other cultures as I find it very fascinating that there are so many different cultures.
“Culture refers to the quality of a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits etc”
According to the dictionary definiton.
A ‘culture’ is something we are born into, we adapt to our families culture and we may even learn about a new culture and choose to be apart of it.
Communicate (Digital Artifact Format)
I decided to focus on cultural drawings in particular as I am passionate about my two cultures and I believe it’s interesting for others to discover and learn about a new culture. Throughout my project I want to learn about the Vietnamese culture and allow others to learn about it too, through my sketches.
I plan to communicate my project through the recreation of a series of drawings that each portray a story/narrative linked to one another. I plan to draw these sketches in a visual art book and create a time-lapse video at the end, a flick through of the storybook explaining the story to viewers.
Text
I will be including text throughout my sketches. After every artwork will be a page of text explaining the artwork, so that readers are able to see if their interpretation of the sketch is exactly what the interpretation is.
Please leave a comment below with any thoughts, questions, comments you have in regards to my project, I appreciate all the feedback!
Thank you Dee
References
https://www.everyculture.com/To-Z/Vietnam.html
http://www.vietnam-culture.com/
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/culture
Dejana Ristic 