So Tuesday was the penultimate week of our classes with the Level 2 students, who are preparing their final ideas.
Each of them is an exploration of using words they have drawn from their friends and family, relating to people’s hopes and fears for the future of Cambodia. These are “test” versions, and will undergo some refinement next week.
The first is a kind of wish/spell tree, where there a lots of words expressing the future people would like to see, contrasted with symbols of the undesirable elements of the present city (primarily symbolised by rubbish). We’re discussing how to simplify matters somewhat, and the final tree will be more streamlined to communicate the underlying idea, but this is a great start. The final piece will also be durational, left in the RUFA grounds for a week for other people from the university to write on, so it evolves and builds over the week.
Its great to see this group embracing the participatory side so fearlessly. In the context of RUFA, its also great to see them working outside of traditional aesthetic categories of what is “beautiful” to communicate their idea.
The second idea is less developed, but is primarily concerned with creating words from leaves. I think this will be lovely, but requires a bit more work (and a bit less masking tape…).
The third idea is really well executed. The words themselves are being created from rusty wire salvaged from the streets of the city. The current word is “trash” but the final piece is going to juxtaposing a range of other words such as “life / energy”, aiming to capture the idea of a city that is imperfect, unruly and unpredictable but beautiful too.
The original intention was to photograph the words in shadows, although there is currently some debate as to whether this is the best way to show the work. Either way, this is shaping up very well…
So - that’s it for now. These are practice versions, designed to test the idea, so will probably look significantly different in the final run - but we’re very happy with the state of play…
