GROUP GOOGLE DOCS

DEFINING DICTIONARY WORDS

FINAL ASSIGNMENT DEADLINE 20-12-2021

RESEARCH

NORMAL vs. DIFFERENT
Normal is seen as the standard, the common, but what makes something normal? I feel like we need to find a way in our publication to show our concepts without referring to it as different (not ordinary), because that would be a colonial approach and make it seem like we're the Other.
Maybe we could not use these words and come up with our own. A word that explains that: yes, all cultures are 'different' but that it doesn't certainly mean that it's not fitting in the 'standard'.

DIASPORA
The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland
The movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland

RACE
Group of people that shares physical common descent.
I actually rarely use this word, because I feel like I don't really understand the concept of it.

DECOLONIAL
To free from the dominating influence of a colonizing power
To identify, challenge, and revise or replace assumptions, ideas, values, and practices that reflect a colonizer's dominating influence and especially a Eurocentric dominating influence

BLACK
Relating or belonging to any of the various human populations characterized by dark skin pigmentation, specifically the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, Oceania, and (indigenous) Australia.

ASIAN
A native or inhabitant of Asia or a person of Asian descent
I think it's really important in our publication that when we refer to an Asian person, we say east, west, south, south-east Asian etc. (if we're not going to specify the specific country of their origin). Because Asia is huge, and each part have their own culture. This ofcourse also applies to when talking about Africa etc.

LANGUAGE
Any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc.

COMMUNICATION
The act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., to someone else

THIRD SPACE
An abstract, in-between place, in which the migrants, refugees and exilic people who have uprooted themselves from their native lands and struggles to put roots in his/her host country, exist. Bhabha who coined the term states that third space: “gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.” Learn more in: Engendering Orientalism: Fatih Akin's Head-On and The Edge of Heavenhttps://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/third-space/30021

Colonial gaze

Decolonial publications

Meaning colonial gaze:
The way in which the West controls and exploits natural and human resources through a dehumanizing narrative of non-Western lands and people by creating and maintaining an imaginary division between the colonizers/civilized, and Other, colonized/savage. Learn more in: Engendering Orientalism: Fatih Akin's Head-On and The Edge of Heaven

In his landmark book, Orientalism, Edward Said (1979) laid out how the East was/is denied the telling of its own narrative. In his introduction, Said quotes Karl Marx, who stated, “they cannot represent themselves; they must be represented,” referring to the peasants and the proletariat (as cited in1979, p. 8). So was the attitude of the West toward the East. Said contends the West defines itself as the superior civilization against the “Orient,” a cultural concept that was created out of the Western imagination and one that came to stand as “truth” about the cultures and peoples spanning from Turkey to Japan. Said also pays homage to Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime minister who stated that the “[t]he East is a career,” (1979, p. 13). This statement is taken to mean that the officers, foreign legion soldiers, artists, diplomats, and archeologists alike helped create a mythical third place in the lands of the East where Westerners are in charge, and as such, they project, impose, and downright force upon the aspirations and desires of the West on the East. Said calls this Western approach to the East, particularly that of the Europeans, an “Orientation,” or an imaginary place created by the West at the expense of the peoples of the “Orient.” Here, men and barbaric and women are voiceless. Critiquing Flaubert’s popular representation of women in particular Said states that:

Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was “typically Oriental.” My argument is that Flaubert’s situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an isolated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled (1979, p. 14).
Source: https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/engendering-orientalism/275950

Orientalism

Colonial gaze Thailand

https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/55511/2/01_Harrison%20_Introduction%3A_Siam%27s_2009.pdf
https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=cultural_studies
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=dignity
https://ap5.fas.nus.edu.sg/fass/geooce/tourist%20studies-2007-law-bunnell-ong-141-64.pdf

INSPIRATION

FAR–NEAR is a curated cross-cultural book series broadening perspectives of Asia and North Africa through image, person, idea and history to unlearn the inherent dominative mode. The Asian continent, the Global South and its people have often been expressed through the lens of a foreign eye–painted as “the other” to a Western audience. Extending beyond the Far East, FAR–NEAR features voices from Japan to Iran and Egypt and just about everywhere in between.

COMMISSION_1986, an Instagram account celebrating Stylish Moms Around the World, by the New York City–based label Commission. The Instagram shows a nostalgic collection of striking, stylish snapshots from mothers in the 80s and 90s. “Many of these mothers were first- and second-generation immigrants in many different parts of the world,” he adds. “Especially in this time of anti-Asian racism caused by the pandemic, the [pictures] highlight their resilience and determination to build and accomplish a life of their own.”
I really like this page because it portrays a version of Asian women we don't see often in Western media.

COMMISSION_1986, an Instagram account celebrating Stylish Moms Around the World, by the New York City–based label Commission. The Instagram shows a nostalgic collection of striking, stylish snapshots from mothers in the 80s and 90s. “Many of these mothers were first- and second-generation immigrants in many different parts of the world,” he adds. “Especially in this time of anti-Asian racism caused by the pandemic, the [pictures] highlight their resilience and determination to build and accomplish a life of their own.”
I really like this page because it shows an image of Asian women we don't see often in Western media.

"Vietnamese Collective (Re)connecting To Our Roots."
Mai Mai collective is committed to the reclamation and commemoration of Vietnamese culture and community.

"What, exactly, does it mean to be Asian in America? How do we reconcile finding our own cultural identity with the societal pressure to assimilate? When the word "Asian" spans 48 countries and 2,300 languages, how can we possibly come together? As Claire Kim writes in The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans, Asian Americans operate in a space of being perceived as perpetual foreigners — while simultaneously positioned on a scale of racial hierarchy as "superior" to Black communities and "inferior" to white ones.

Throughout history, our community has tried to shift that position upwards by buying into the white-dictated ideal of 'superiority' — overrepresenting our wealthy over our working class, or our 'successful' immigrants over our undocumented or refugees to gain privileges that come with proximity to whiteness. But those actions — alongside harmful stereotypes perpetuated by the model minority myth — fail to recognize the complexities of our identity in this country while pitting us against other BIPOC groups: They flatten what it means to be Asian American into a singular image and narrows the scope of the "Asian American struggle" to a wealthy, light-skinned, East Asian perspective.

After a year of increased anti-Asian sentiment and violence, celebrating being Asian American can feel more difficult than ever. But at the same time, it's more important than ever for us to show the multiplicity of our identity — to challenge these perceptions — and to underscore the sheer diversity of our traditions, backgrounds and heritage." https://www.papermag.com/honor-of-being-asian-2653136496.html?rebelltitem=24#rebelltitem24

These photo series and interviews shows a diverse cast of Asian American creatives, they share stories that honor their heritage and identity. Conceptualized by Eda Yu, Michelle Watt, Edward Yeung and Heji Rashdi.

XING is a research and curatorial platform centered on the poetics and politics of Southeast Asian artistic practices.

Assuming form of a shapeshifter, it morphs between localities and temporalities; with(in)flux. A space of not-yet possibilities, the platform attempts to dismantle matrices concerned with the region from non-dominant perspectives.

Sources on Asian
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1loGAKCQHx9TGMpoqs7-Bkmha8VK4Huwa

Sources on shared black texts
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UICarFwv5wO3tS5sr75TPTxIVr6M4MW_

List of decolonial books
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/decolonial

[click on the titles to get to the publication website!!!]

PUBLICATION CONTENT

MY IDEAS

- A page with questions the audience can answer to make them reflect about their own (unseen) embodied experiences and archive. Example: what are things you do in your home what your Dutch peers won’t relate to or understand?

- Make the magazine interactive for our audience.

- See Commission_1986 @ Inspiration. Doing something visual with archival pictures of our mothers that shows them in a different light other than the western gaze.

- Collect images of the graphic design from our heritage. Put these pictures in a moodboard. Create a hybrid visual design for our magazine. Look at: architecture, labels, packaging of feed, interior, traffic sign etc.

MOTHER ARCHIVE

Pictures of my mom, the 90's/2000s

THAI VISUAL LANGUAGE

I've collected different kinds of visuals/objects of the Thai culture that I grew up with. As a group, we're going to take inspiration from our images to create a new hybrid visual style for our zine.

Seeing these images really make me appreciate the Thai visual design more. In my future work, I should try to get more inspiration of my culture, rather than go on Pinterest to look for a graphic design style that's everybody been doing. I will question myself if I find something 'ugly'. Why do I think it's ugly? Is it because it doesn't fit my western gaze?

Theoretical framework

Theories that align with our group publication.

DECOLONIAL LISTENING / ROLANDO VAZQUEZ
"Decolonial aesthesis is about the recovery of memories that have been silenced and that are not part of our awareness of the world. It is about enabling them to take place again through embodiment and experience. It is the possibility of undoing that displacement from history, to redefine what can become history and what can become world."
--> With our publication, we want to make the unseen experiences, history, language etc. of diasporans known.

In literature and history, stories of women like my (immigrant) mother are mostly absent. The immigration narratives of women (of different communities) nearly exist in mainstream cultural productions.

"Traditionally, narratives of immigration have tended to be masculine and centered on the experiences of European immigrants. These narratives cast the immigrant story as one of progress and upward mobility that helps to frame the US as the “shinning city on a hill,” a beacon of democracy where opportunities for a better life are limitless."

"These are women who work hard and sacrifice for their families but whose life stories are invisible outside of their communities. As women, they work in a gendered system of labor that devalues the work performed in the domestic space. The traditional immigrant narrative favors the labor performed in the public space—labor that is visible and easily recognized. The working bodies of many immigrant women are easily rendered invisible by the private space of the home. The traditional narrative also positions men as primary wage earners within a family wage system that ignores the role immigrant women play in financially supporting their families and communities."

When these women ARE visible, I feel like they're always portrayed as typical stereotypes, or never as the main lead with their own full identity, as a white character. You see this happening with all background migrants mothers. "When not invisible, Latina immigrants are most often represented as flat stereotypes of domestic workers. From sexually alluring Latina maids in films like Spanglish and Maid in Manhattan, to feisty spitfires like Rosario in Will and Grace, immigrant Latina domestic workers are reduced to problematic caricatures of immigrant laboring bodies. Outside of the mainstream, however, cultural producers have been creating characters that are complex and multidimensional, and more realistically represent the labor and immigration experiences of Latinas. These narratives offer oppositional stories of gender, labor, and immigration that more effectively represent the nuanced and complicated reality of immigrant Latinas."

Sources:
https://www.wcwonline.org/Women-=-Books-Blog/immigrantwomen
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27740582
https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/12062/7/Yolanda_Hernandez-Albujar_Dissertation_fixed_May_15.pdf

I love seeing these pictures of my mom, it shows her in a way I see her. Not in the way the western world sees her. I feel like there's not enough positive representation of immigrant mothers in the media. You often only get to see the 'immigrant' side of them, as if that's all they are.

My mother had a whole life before she was an immigrant. She could take care of herself. She made her own money and took care of her relatives. She designed her own clothes. She was a excellent sales person. This is the mother I grew up with in Thailand. A strong independent woman. Not the Thai woman who is dependent of her white husband.

THE CONCEPT FOR PUBLICATION

LINGUISTIC CODE SWITCHING

Growing up back and forth between Thailand and Holland as a kid made learning a language properly harder for me. I was always behind in class because I couldn't read or write. When I finally learnt how to write and read Thai, we moved back to Holland (again). This time I was 8, and because I never spoke Dutch in Thailand, I wasn't able to speak a single word of Dutch. I had to relearn the whole language again, when I just finally got the Thai language under control. It was a constant struggle.

Because I never really grew up with one native language, I'm still struggling till this day. Now, I would say that Dutch is my most fluent language. Although I still struggle with vocabulairity and grammar.

https://www.chatelaine.com/living/my-mom-and-i-dont-speak-the-same-language/
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michelleno/love-parents-broken-english-language-immigration
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/michelleno/love-parents-broken-english-language-immigration

code switching
https://www.unitedlanguagegroup.com/blog/linguistic-code-switching
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching#:~:text=Multilinguals%2C%20speakers%20of%20more%20than,and%20phonology%20of%20each%20variety.
https://bilinguistics.com/code-switching-and-code-mixing/
https://www.hercampus.com/school/bu/9-struggles-being-multilingual/

Tinglish
Tinglish can best be described as an annihilation of the English language. Tinglish language is the ability or inadequacy, it depends on how you view it, to converse in English without the use of proper sentence construction. Its roots are the sole rights of Thai and western joint conversation.
https://thaisabai.org/2012/11/thai-and-english-tinglish-conversation-time-difference/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinglish


For the magazine, I'm going to record a conversation of me and my mom. We communicate in three languages, Thai, English and Dutch. I think our way of communicating together really shows:
how it is to have an immigrant parent with a different native language
how it is to be an cross cultural kid who can't express everything properly in just one language

VISUAL STYLE ZINE

My graphic design moodboard for the zine.

BIBI'S ASSIGNMENTS

[click on the PDF to see the assignments]

[navigate to the right to see the rest of the process]